


just because it's over doesn't mean it's really over

by challaudaku



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Ok have fun, Role Reversal, and then bucky crashes the plane, but its not i promise, it could've been stronger but also we could've been dead, it seems like a major character death, it's bc steve falls off the train, major character death but not really, the ending... oof, this has been a year in the making please be nice or i'll cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 23:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20072632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/challaudaku/pseuds/challaudaku
Summary: Steve Rogers falls backward out of a train and brains himself on a rock and dies. Bucky Barnes takes up the Captain America mantle, and the mantle must make you a dumbass, because he flies a plane into the Arctic Ocean and wakes up 70 years later.





	just because it's over doesn't mean it's really over

**Author's Note:**

> for [molly](https://twitter.com/brklynbrnes) <33 i love you so much and i hope you enjoy!!!
> 
> thank you so much to [zoe](https://twitter.com/valcaroI) and [cait](https://twitter.com/sweetenerstarr) for betaing. ily guys <3
> 
> warnings for mentions of wanting to die (nothing explicit) and a non-explicit almost-sex scene in the middle

Bucky’s ears pop.

He’s dangling off of a train, forty feet in the air, and he’s holding on for dear life, and all he can think about is how is ears are popping. In between the speed and the cold, it’s understandable that his ears would pop. It’s also understandable that he’s  _ not _ thinking about the fact that, holy fuck, he’s dangling out of a train and he could slip and fall and brain himself on a rock and die  _ right fucking now _ .

He’s trying to remain calm, at least until he can get back onto the train.

Bucky shifts, again, trying to fight every urge he has to not look down. He looks up instead, into Steve’s pretty face. Steve says something, reaching out his hand, but Bucky can’t hear it over the wind.

God, if Bucky dies without hearing Steve’s voice one last time — 

Except he’s not going to die. Bucky shifts a little closer to Steve, and he holds out his hand and makes a desperate grab for Steve’s.

Their fingers make contact, but not enough, and Bucky wants to shout, or cry, or — why limit himself? — both.

He takes a breath that he’s pretty sure is shaky — good thing Steve probably can’t hear it over the wind, heh — and moves, probably for the last time. It’s hit or miss, now.

And he makes it.

Bucky doesn’t comprehend it for a second, but he’s being pulled back into the train.

“Steve,” he croaks, because of course his brain always defaults back to Steve being the only thing he knows. On that fucking table, on this fucking train.

Fucking Steve, man.

“Buck,” Steve says, looking him up and down. He wants to fucking kiss him. Bucky’s fully on the train, now, facing Steve, and Steve’s back is to the hole.

Steve’s back is to the hole.

It happens quickly, in maybe a split second. A strong gust of wind comes, and the train continues to move, and Steve falls backwards.

Out of the train.

For a second, Bucky thinks he’s dreaming. Because his luck can’t be  _ that _ bad. And then he blinks. And Steve isn’t there.

The fuck?

_ Steve isn’t fucking there _ .

Bucky, grabbing onto the side of the train, looks out of the hole, into the cavern below. As far as he can see, nothing’s there. Steve — 

Did he just fucking  _ fall _ out of the train?

_ No _ . Bucky’s heart is beating  _ really _ fast. He’s been on so many missions in his time in the army and with the Commandos and he’s walked into all of them knowing that he could die.

Steve wasn’t supposed to die in any of them.

Steve wasn’t even supposed to  _ be _ in any of them.

Bucky can’t stop looking down into the ravine, just waiting for Steve to come back into his vision, to climb up the fucking mountain and just be  _ okay _ . He’s a super soldier. Could he have survived that fall…? Maybe Bucky could go and save him…

It’s a stupid thought though, a crazy one, because even if Steve  _ did _ survive, Bucky sure as hell wouldn’t survive that. What’s he even going to do, jump right down after Steve?

Bucky’s spent most of his life knowing in the back of his mind that Steve’s going to die before him — Steve was the one who was somehow born with half of an immune system. And Bucky  _ prepared  _ for that. Every time Steve got sick, Bucky grit his teeth, smiled, and expected the worst.

He’d never tell Steve this, but when a hunk of muscle came and rescued him from a torture room in Azzano, with Steve’s soul…

Well, for the first time since befriending that scrawny little kid on the playground when he was nine, Bucky didn’t feel like he had to worry. Bucky didn’t need to spend each moment with Steve as if it would be their last.

Except…

Now…

Nothing moves below him, and Steve doesn’t return and Bucky is probably going to be sick, but he steps back inside the train anyway. Steve’s shield is still laying there.

Picking it up, Bucky smiles bitterly. It feels like there’s a hole in his heart, like he lost something so vital to him. Is the air getting thinner, or is that Bucky short-circuiting…? He can’t even comprehend what just happened. He still has a mission to finish, though, so Bucky walks on, swallowing the bile building up in his throat.

There’ll be all the time in the world to mourn Steve after.

…

“No.”

“Sergeant Barnes.”

There’s a warning in Agent Carter’s voice, and Bucky knows exactly why. He also knows that Agent Carter is possibly one of the most dangerous people he’s ever met, even before she threatened to date Steve and take him away from Bucky for good.

(Maybe he’s being over-dramatic. Maybe he loved Steve  _ too _ much. It doesn’t matter anyway. Bucky knows, now, that there’s a worse way he could lose Steve.)

Still, he’s not going to just  _ give up _ Steve’s shield. He feels stupid, but this shield is all he has left of Steve. Maybe it’s a caricatured version of him, but either way it’s  _ his _ .

“Sorry, but this was Captain Rogers’ and as he has no living relatives left —”

“It should go back to  _ Howard Stark _ ,” Agent Carter says, cutting him off. “He made the shield.” She would have her terrifying stare down, expect it’s tainted with grief and sympathy.

Bucky supposes that he’s not the only one who lost Steve. Maybe he should be less stubborn, just be ready comply.

His jaw clenches anyway. This is something he  _ can’t _ give up.

“It should go to  _ me _ , seeing as I was as good as family in Steve’s eyes. I’m listed as his next of kin, in fact. Check it.”

Bucky lets that sit in the air as he continues to clutch the straps of the shield. He hasn’t let go of them since they Howling Commandos got back to base. He didn’t say anything to the other Howlers, except to report Steve’s death, and now he feels a slight pang of guilt for that — he knows that they must be hurting, too.

Except.

They lost the  _ Captain _ . They didn’t lose Steve Rogers. They didn’t  _ know _ Steve Rogers.

Captains can be replaced.

And then Bucky gets a stupid idea. One worthy of Steve himself.

“With all due respect, Agent,” Bucky says when Agent Carter doesn’t say anything else for a few moments, “it seems that you’re in need of a new captain for the Howlers.”

It’s probably reckless of Bucky to volunteer to take Steve’s place. Or crazy. Or both. Steve was a  _ super soldier _ . He had probably triple the dexterity and strength Bucky has.

But Steve was also  _ Steve _ . The hilariously dorky Steve. The Steve that knew every president’s full name and their birthday. The Steve who had stupid ideas, not because he wanted to get hurt, but because he genuienly wanted to make a change.. The Steve that stood up for what he  _ knew _ was right. The Steve that liked getting punched. The Steve that was too dumb not to run from a fight.

Bucky’s pretty sure he can nail that part of Steve.

Besides, Steve is —  _ was  _ — his best friend. He owes it to Steve to uphold the Captain America title. America needs it, right?

“Are you suggesting —?”

“Yes,” Bucky answers, not even letting Agent Carter finish her question. He  _ needs _ to. The more seconds that pass, the more Bucky is sure about it.

He needs to do this.

Agent Carter looks down, audibly sighing.

Bucky holds his breath. And waits. And waits. And waits.

“We’ll  _ see _ ,” she says finally, not looking up.

And, for the first time since Steve fell, Bucky  _ feels _ something inside.

He thinks it’s hope.

…

Bucky’s Captain America.

And it’s fucking crazy.

The first thing he does is reject the costume. Admittedly, the combat costume Steve got is better than the tights he rescued Bucky in, but Bucky doesn’t wear the stars and stripes. He never has, and never will.

The second thing he does is wear the costume.

_ Apparently _ , rejecting the star-spangled mess of a costume that Steve somehow pulled off isn’t really an option if he wants to be Captain America.

So, Bucky gets his measurements taken, and he gets a costume — just an altered one of Steve’s extras. It’s a quick process overall, so as the sun is setting he goes back to the Howling Commandos.

Because he’s not being fucking  _ fair _ . He’s avoided them since they got back to base. Bucky hasn’t even told them that he’s taking Steve’s spot.

Although, it doesn’t really feel like Bucky’s  _ taking _ Steve’s spot. Just holding it. It’s just temporary.

Still wearing the costume, Bucky grabs Steve’s — wait, no,  _ his _ — shield, and finds the Howling Commandos in a bar.

The same bar Steve recruited them all, except it’s empty now, all bombed out and broken. Even in just a few months, the war struck here.

Still, it’s fitting the Bucky would find the other five here. This is where Steve brought them together.

Now it’s Bucky’s turn to do the same.

“What’s this?” Dugan says, his voice thick. He sees Bucky first, glancing up as Bucky purposefully makes his footsteps noisy. He’s slipped into the habit of being quiet, too quiet, but he doesn’t want to sneak up on his friends.

Bucky’s about to open his mouth, everyone’s eyes on his, when he realizes, looking into Dugan’s eyes, that Dugan’s been  _ crying _ .

Well, fuck.

Bucky doesn’t know what to say to  _ that _ . All at once, every bit of confidence he had zaps out of Bucky. He didn’t realize how  _ tired _ he is.

Steve… isn’t here.

Steve will never be here again.

Steve is gone forever.

Oh.

He feels sort of sick.

All the Commandos are looking at Bucky expectantly, now, but every word Bucky has prepared is gone. He doesn’t even know what he was going to say.

“ _ Un capitaine parti, un autre pour le remplacer _ ,” Dernier says, looking at Bucky with one eyebrow raised. “ _ Comme s'il pouvait être remplacé _ .” Bucky turns to Jones for some translation, but Jones has looked away, his lips pursed in a straight line.

“We needed a new captain,” Bucky says slowly, swallowing hard and gripping Steve’s shield a little bit harder, “since Steve is —”

Bucky breaks off because it feels like his lungs contract. Is this what Steve felt like, every time his little lungs failed him? Because — shit — he can’t  _ breathe _ . Literally all the air in his lungs is  _ gone _ . His eyes are swimming, also, and the room’s blurring.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. How’s he supposed to be Captain America when he can’t even talk to his own team?

“Jimmy,” Dugan says, pulling Bucky back.

He feels so weak, he can’t even be bothered to reproach Dugan on the use of ‘Jimmy’. He doesn’t even know when Dugan got up — must have been in the middle of Bucky freaking out, because suddenly Dugan is standing right next to him. Bucky has no idea what his face looks like, but it must be pretty bad, because Dugan gives him a sad — no, a  _ pitying _ — look and spreads out his arms.

For a hug?

Bucky hesitates, and then he realizes that he’s actually very cold. God, it’s so cold. It’s like the mountains that were freezing through Bucky’s wool coat. Thinking back on it, Steve was probably colder; the costume, Bucky can now tell, isn’t very insulating. And the wind of the train? It made everything even colder. God.  _ God _ ,  _ Steve’s fall must have been so cold his poor body must be freezing it must already be freezing there’s no one to get him and Steve is freezing all alone even though Bucky promised to never leave him alone  _ —

And Bucky’s leaning into Dugan’s arms and he’s  _ breaking _ .

The hug is all wrong. He’s hugging the  _ wrong person _ . Bucky knows that he hugged Steve a lot, but did he hug him  _ enough _ ? Probably not. And now he’ll never be able to hug Steve again.

He can’t be a fucking captain. What was he thinking?

He’s not crying, because Bucky hasn’t cried yet. God, he wishes he would just cry. Get the worst over with. He’s usually such an easy crier — he used to cry at everything, but the one time it’s something to cry over he  _ can’t _ . He just wants the tears pouring down his face and to just  _ get it over with _ because right now? Bucky just feels numb.

He’d rather feel too much than nothing at all.

Bucky’s not sure how long he stays there, heaving, but not crying, but he pulls away eventually and looks at the other Commandos, clenching his jaw and holding Steve’s — his — shield.

He needs to be strong. He  _ needs _ to be.

“We have a debriefing tomorrow morning,” Bucky tells the men —  _ his men _ , now — with a little nod. “0800.”

He nods again, trying to ignore the way their gazes seer into him, and then he spins around on one foot and leaves the room.

He doesn’t have a destination.

…

Bucky’s pretty sure crying at his first debriefing as a captain isn’t the best impression. Except he started crying in his bed last night — a real bed, so different from the bedrolls he’s adjusted to — and he can’t stop bursting into tears at random intervals. He sort of wishes he wasn’t feeling anything again. That pain wasn’t better, but it was easier to deal with. Of course, he knows that if he went into that numb state again he would just wish he was crying.

The rest of the Commandos are there, too, for Phillips’ debriefing. Bucky hasn’t said anything — he never really does at these sorts of things — until Monty, or Jim, or someone, says something that catches his attention.

“It’s not like we can just knock on the front door.”

Bucky almost lets out a laugh. He knows that any laugh he releases is sure to sound hysterical, so he forces it down, but a stupid idea comes to his head — one so stupid, Steve would have come up with it, in another life.

Blinking away any tears threatening to spill, Bucky speaks up, asking, “Why not?”

…

Their plan, or Bucky’s plan, really, is going great. He successfully gets captured (would Steve be proud, or would he be shaking his head?), and he successfully follows the Red Skull onto the plane, and he successfully opens some sort of wormhole with the Tesseract, and he successfully sucks the Red Skull into the wormhole and drops the Tesseract into the ocean.

Okay, that last part wasn’t part of the plan, and Bucky didn’t do it on purpose — he’s not even exactly sure what happened there, but he has more pressing issues.

Bombs. One bomb in particular, on this plane, which is heading for New York. Bucky has no idea how to fly a plane. Even if he did, what would he do with the plane? Fly it back to Europe? That’s not an option.

He does figure that moving the handles down would make it go down (duh) and he  _ is _ flying over a lot of ice and water.

He might not have another choice.

For a second, he fiddles with airplane radio, trying to remember the way Morita taught him to hack into a different radio, and he makes a connection. Hopefully he did it right and hacked into the SSR’s headquarters and not HYDRA’s.

“Hello?” he calls, hoping someone’s on the other side. “It’s Sergeant Barnes, does anyone copy?”

“Barnes?” a voice calls, and Bucky feels hope at hearing Morita’s voice.

“Bucky!” a new voice says through the little radio, and Bucky recognizes Peggy’s English accent.

“Peggy,” Bucky says, and he falters. He doesn’t know what to say to her, the girl that almost took his best friend from him, before the world took him from both of them. Maybe Bucky’s held a certain amount of resentment towards her for that, but he doesn’t have the time to think back on if he should’ve been more friendly with her. 

“Peggy, there’s a bomb on this plane,” he says, swallowing his life reflection. He needs to focus. “I need to put it in the water.” There’s silence as Peggy realizes what he’s saying. It sinks in for Bucky, too, and there’s always been a part of him that realized he wasn’t coming home from the war. Yeah, he hates to leave his little sisters, but they have each other. They’ll be okay. 

“Bucky —” Peggy starts, but Bucky cuts her off.

“Peggy,” he says, grabbing onto the plane controls. “I’ll tell Steve you said ‘hey’, yeah?” 

It’s the least Bucky can do, after all.

“Bucky, you need to —” Bucky doesn’t know what she says after. The radio cuts off as he pulls the controls, leading the plane down. 

He’ll never know. 

…

Bucky crashes into the snow. His body is aching all over, but he’s not dead yet. He expected to die straight away. That’s… odd. And painful.

Ow, ow, ow.

He can feel dull pains stabbing his head and his legs and his abdomen and his  _ everywhere _ .

_ Ow _ .

Instead, Bucky’s probably going to just bleed out; debris is littering the ground around him and the snow is turning pink quickly —  _ is that from him? _

Bucky gasps, and crawls, and he forces his body into a lying position and looks up at the sky. The snow is starting to dull his pain — it feels like his wounds are already healing themselves, but Bucky  _ knows _ that can’t be true.

He thinks about how Steve got injured, once, behind the lines. A bullet in his side. His skin stitched itself up before they even made it back to base. It’s a dumb thought, brought on by near-death. If Steve was here with him, he would already be up, looking for a way to get home.

Bucky can’t fucking move. It hurts. It hurts so bad. He coughs, and his saliva tastes metallic. Blood. Great. That means there’s blood in his lungs, which means some shrapnel hit him in the chest, which means he’ll slowly deflate like a balloon.

Bucky would laugh, if he didn’t think it would make everything hurt more.

And seriously? After being drafted for the war, after being taken prisoner, after being tortured, after still fighting, after losing his best friend… The least God could do is give him a fast, painless death.

There are waves from the ocean coming in, now, and pouring over him. He gasps, but there’s no air. His lungs only take in water, and blood, and pain, it hurts it hurts it hurts.

He’s drowning.

Oh.

Bucky doesn’t have anywhere to go. He’s too injured, he’s too damn  _ tired.  _ He doesn’t want to fight anymore. There’s nothing to fight for. The fight is over.

Bucky’s fight is finished.

So, Bucky lays there, looking up at the sky, the snow on his back, and lets the water wash over him, and waits to see his family again — his mom and his dad. Eventually his little sisters.

And Steve.

…

Except Bucky opens his eyes and he  _ doesn’t _ see his family again.

Instead, he’s lying on a bed — a real, soft, not-ice-and-snow bed — and he’s staring up at a ceiling fan and there’s a radio playing somewhere in the background. There’s a dull pain running throughout his body, and his ears are ringing a little bit, but he gathers himself enough to sit up and listen to the report that the radio is playing — some sports game.

“...Pearson beaned Reiser in Philadelphia last month. Wouldn’t the youngster like a hit here to return the favor?”

And something about that seems  _ so familiar _ , but he can’t quite remember why. The room he’s in seems comfortable enough — there are side tables and rugs and a window with billowy curtains.

And yet something tells Bucky that this is  _ not right _ .

The door opens, and a lady walks in, her hair down and her face all smiles.

“Good morning,” she says, right as it hits Bucky.

_ Bucky recognizes the radio’s commentary because he was there _ . He and Steve went to one baseball game together and it was Dodgers versus the Phillies and it was probably one of the best days he had ever had, and  _ he knows that commentary. _

The radio is fake, then. It’s fake, and Bucky has been…

Has been what, captured?

“Where am I?” Bucky asks, eyeing the lady up and down.

“You’re in a recovery room in New York City,” she responds.

Right.

Bucky’s been in recovery rooms before. He’s had nurses. This  _ isn’t _ one. Her hair is wrong, and her clothes are wrong, and something is very, very wrong…

But Bucky’s been captured before. He knows that it’s easier to play along. The sooner he complies, the sooner he can figure out what’s going on.

The less torture he’ll endure. He can feel bile rise up his throat as he flashes back to that stupid German table. God, he hasn’t felt this scared in months.

Maybe, if he plays along, he can break out of here.

Maybe, the stupid, childish, hopeful part of his brain thinks, he can be broken out, just like last time.

(He knows there’s no Steve coming to get him.)

So, Bucky says, “Okay,” and the nurse gives him a smile. She asks if his body is hurting at all — he just recovered from a plane crash, after all. He tells her that he’s fine, thank you, even though the pain is moving from dull to sharp, and it’s coursing through his body and his head beginning to pound, just a bit.

All things considered, he’s been worse.

She smiles and tells him to get some rest. He nods, says that he will, and the second she’s gone, he searches the room.

There are bugs littered throughout. They look more advanced than anything used during the War, but he can tell that they’re bugs.

That’s expected.

The window is dead bolted shut, too, which is also expected. It  _ looks _ like Brooklyn outside, but when Bucky looks straight down, the street is quiet. There’s no movement, no sounds, no…  _ nothing _ . That’s not Brooklyn.

So maybe he’s not actually in New York…?

Captured behind enemy lines again…

He forces the bile down.

He’ll be fine. Bucky  _ has _ to be fine. He was fine (sort of) the first time he was captured. He’ll be fine this time, too.

The door is also locked. Bucky was pretty sure he heard it click behind the nurse, but he checks anyway, just to confirm.

So, no escape, except by force. Bucky’s pretty sure he  _ could _ knock down the door, but he decides to stay.

Collect information first, escape later.

He’s not sure how much time he spends in the room. The sun outside isn’t moving, which is evidently something his captors forgot about.

Or just didn’t care about…?

Which is an even more interesting question — why capture him and set this all up if they don’t care that he would  _ know _ that it’s fake?

Bucky’s brain hurts.

Doctors come in. They ask him how he is. He says he’s fine. He sleeps. Someone brings in food at one point. He doesn’t touch it, he’s not an idiot. He doesn’t see any doctor twice. They take his blood and he tries not to panic at the needles. He dismantles the radio, boredom overtaking him.

It’s probably been a solid day before a man with dark skin, a black trench coat, and an eyepatch walks into Bucky’s room. Bucky, laying down on his bed with his hands propping his neck up, only spares him a glance. This is just going to be another doctor; another question Bucky is going to bullshit his way through.

“Captain Barnes,” the man says.

Bucky takes in how he stands with a purpose, how his one good eye is looking around everywhere, how he’s probably one of the more important people in whatever organization is keeping Bucky.

And so, he says, “Sergeant. I’m just a sergeant.”

The man makes a humming noise in his throat, evaluating Bucky through that lone eye.

“And how are you, Sergeant?” he asks. Bucky clenches his jaw.

Another.

Pointless.

Question.

“Like I’ve told every other doctor that entered, I’m fine,” Bucky snaps, his headache continuing to pound. He pushes it down. He’s become good at pushing down pain. Last time, they didn’t like him feeling pain.

“I’m not a doctor,” the man replies. Bucky hums this time. “I’m Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD.”

“You don’t sound German,” Bucky notes, trying to test the waters. First step: figure out where he  _ really _ is. His heart bangs against his ribcage as Fury raises his eyebrow.

“I’m not,” he answers, finally. “I’m American.”

Bucky lets himself breath, just a little bit. There a good chance that he’s lying, of course, but maybe…

Maybe Bucky’s  _ really _ in a recovery room in New York.

It doesn’t explain the bugs, or the window, or the nurse, or the radio program.

But still.

Hope.

“What’s SHIELD?” he asks next, sitting up straight.

“The Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division,” Fury answers, not even hesitating.

“Never heard of it,” Bucky challenges, cocking his head.

“It’s —” Fury hesitates for a split-second, squinting a little bit “— new,” he finishes after a beat.

“New?” Bucky asks, his pulse speeding up a little bit. “What do you mean ‘new’? How long after the plane crash is it?”

Because it must be a few solid weeks, at least. Bucky doesn’t even know how he survived that crash.

Enough time to make a whole new Security Division, apparently.

“You’ve been asleep for a long time,” Fury says, softening his voice a little bit. “The ice froze you for a while and we just recently unfroze you.”

“Define long,” Bucky says after a moment, letting Fury’s words settle in. He’s been… asleep? What did he miss? Are the Allies winning the war yet? “A few weeks?” Bucky asks, when Fury doesn’t answer. “Months? A year?”

The longer Fury remains silent, the harder Bucky’s heart starts to pound. Is freezing a human body even possible? How is he still  _ alive _ ?

“Seventy,” Fury finally says, looking at Bucky with a concerned expression. Bucky didn’t even realize that he had stood up.

“Seventy what?” Bucky asks, narrowing his eyes, clenching his hands into fists. His headache is reaching a peak, pounding in his ears now, and his stomach drops before Fury answers, “Seventy years.”

Seventy years.

The answer echoes in Bucky’s ears, and he sits back down on the bed, feeling nauseated all of the sudden.

“How am I alive?” Bucky asks, not even making eye contact with Fury. He looks down at his hands, because he doesn’t  _ feel _ ninety-eight. He certainly doesn’t look like it.

“We’re still running tests,” Fury says, “but there seems to be traces of the same serum Steve Rogers had. A bastardized version, if you will.”

Bucky flinches at the mention of Steve, but he supposes that adds up. It’s not a stretch to say that Zola put some type of the Super Soldier Serum into his body; there was plenty of drugs pumped into him, one of them could’ve been that.

“What year is it?” Bucky asks, trying to make his heartbeat slow down.

“2012,” Fury answers. The year sounds weird. Foreign. “Two-thousand” isn’t right.

There’s a moment of silence and Bucky’s not sure what to think.

So, he crashed the plane. Saved New York. Got frozen for seventy — well, sixty-seven — years. And now…

What?

“We win the war?” Bucky asks, finally, swallowing all his other questions, like what happened with the other Howling Commandos, what happened with Peggy, did they find Steve’s body, what’s the world  _ like _ now?

“Yeah,” Fury replies, the smile evident in his voice. “Unconditional surrender.”

“Then why did you wake me up?”

The question lingers in the air, and Bucky  _ knows _ what it sounds like. Still, it’s a reasonable question. The war’s over. He’s not  _ needed _ . And he’s  _ tired _ .

Fury pauses for a few moments before responding, “You missed out on a lot of life, Sergeant. You finally get to live it.” 

…

Maybe it sounds depressing, but Bucky’s not sure he  _ wants _ to live it.

First, Bucky sleeps. They place him in an apartment in Brooklyn — ha, ha, welcome home — and gift him with furniture, including a bed that's softer and bigger than anything the forties produced. At first, he's sure he isn't going to be able to sleep — he feels too jittery, the bed's too soft — but the unstopping pain that's been coursing through his body since he woke up lulls him to sleep. Besides, he’s slept seventy years; more isn’t going to make a big difference.

When he wakes up, two days have passed. Bucky tries to eat some of the food in his new fridge. He can't keep it down. It's seems like it's trying so hard to be natural that it's artificial. Bucky would take scraps of rations over it any day. (Okay, maybe not really — rations fucking  _ sucked _ — but at least they never made him throw up.)

The fourth day, Bucky goes to the library.

After spending four days holed in his apartment, he forgot how high tech everything seems. The first time he saw Times Square, he nearly passed out. His neighborhood is softer than that, but it’s still loud, and full of cars, and it makes Bucky blink several times.

Gritting his teeth and looking down, away from the cars, he walks the simple two blocks from his apartment building to the library.

When he gets there, the first thing he registers is how much  _ bigger _ it is, compared to how it was in the 40s. He grew up in this neighborhood; he and Steve went to the library all the time. It was mostly when they were younger and the days seemed endless, and it seemed plenty big then.

If it was big then, it’s enormous now. Still, Bucky rears his head and walks in.

The library is split into several pretty sections, and Bucky heads for the section labeled history. He missed nearly 70 years of it, might as well catch up. At the front of the aisle, there’s a display, covered in red, white, and blue. It looks hideous, Bucky thinks. 

It announces that, in honor of Captain America being found in the ice, they have a bunch of biographies of Captain America — both of them — available. Grabbing one at the front, entitled  _ The Two Captains _ , Bucky belatedly realizes that he’s famous. People, like, know about him.

The book in hand claims it follows the stories of both Steve Rogers and James Barnes, and it’s supposed to go along with the exhibit with the same name at the National Museum of Natural History. Bucky doesn’t know what that is, but he assumes it’s famous, so he sits down to see what Doctor Richard Lukin has to say about him and Steve.

Seven hours and several books later, Bucky finds out that during his time in the ice, he was raised to a public figure on the same level of Steve, pre-death. He’s been in comics, and movies, and even trading cards. He reads about the founding of SHIELD, which stemmed from the SSR and Peggy Carter herself. He reads about the dropping of the atomic bombs, and the unconditional surrender. He reads about the Soviet Union, and communism, and the fall of the Soviet Union. He reads about going to the fucking moon. They went to the fucking  _ moon _ . Bucky’s mind explodes.

He also finds out that they never found Steve’s body. It doesn’t sit well in his stomach.

He figures he should leave and get dinner or go to bed, so he walks out, promising to himself to come back tomorrow.

…

Bucky reads. He eats. He sleeps. He works out.

He takes the bus to Arlington.

He cries over an empty grave.

…

Bucky spends most of his time in the library, and it’s there that Fury finds him. 

“Fury,” he says, looking up to see Fury approaching him, clan in a black trenchcoat and eye patch and holding a manila folder.

“Sergeant Barnes,” Fury calls, his voice deep and booming.

Bucky looks around, and realizes that there’s no one else around. The library isn’t that crowded in the first place, but he should’ve realized it was totally empty.

“You’ve got me alone,” he notes to Fury, placing his book aside. He’s assuming Fury didn’t come for a nice chat. 

“We need your help,” Fury says, sitting across from Bucky. 

“Who’s we?” Bucky asks.

Fury studies Bucky for a moment before responding, “The world,” with a dark expression on his face.

“Dramatic,” Bucky notes. All the same, when Fury pushes the folder towards him, he takes it.

Opening it, he scans over the first page, something about the Tesseract. The back of his neck feels tingly remembering the Tesseract’s unnatural blue glow.

“The Tesseract’s been taken,” Fury explains, pointing a finger to the page Bucky’s looking at.

“I thought it was in the bottom of the ocean?” Bucky asks, looking up at Fury and furrowing his brows.

“Howard found it,” he responds. “While he was looking for you.”

“Stark?” Bucky asks, picking up the sheet on the Tesseract and reading a brief overview of it during SHIELD’s possession of it. He didn’t know Stark that well, during the war. They were work friends, at most. Still, it was nice to think that someone was looking for him when he was in the ice.

He wonders if they looked for Steve, too.

He puts the sheet back and closes the file.

“We could use a soldier on our side,” Fury says, and Bucky puts down his sheet to meet Fury’s eye.

“You have the entire American army at your disposal,” he says. 

Which maybe is a little harsh. Fury looks a little taken aback at his response. Sorry, did the history books say that Captain America was ready to fight?

It’s just that Bucky never wanted to fight in the first place. He’s sure as hell not jumping up to fight again. He’s not their American symbol. He never wanted to be, Steve just happened to  _ die _ . 

“You’re Captain America,” Fury argues, and Bucky has to stifle a laugh.

“You put on stars and stripes once, and suddenly they promote you, like, four places in the army.”

He should feel guilty, really. Bucky thinks he’s ruining Nick Fury’s perfect vision of Captain America. Except on the other hand, he never really  _ was _ the perfect soldier. That was the blond, annoying,  _ lovable _ , thorn in his side.

“Captain Barnes —”

“Sergeant,” Bucky corrects, because it makes him feel weird, all of this brava surrounding him. There are  _ books _ written about him. Fucking  _ books _ .

“Sergeant Barnes. You’re Captain America, whether you like it or not —” Bucky’s about to protest, but Fury talks over him before he can. “ _ Whether you like it or not _ ,” Fury says. “ _ And _ you’re the only living person who has ever encountered this Tesseract in the field.” Bucky shifts in his seat. Fury’s got him there. “You’re the only one who might stand a  _ chance _ against this guy. We need you. Hell, if you won’t do it for the world, do it for me. I want you on this team.”

And Bucky’s thinking about the posters plastered on every street, in every alley, declaring _I want you_ _for the U.S. army._

And Bucky’s thinking about after Azzano, of Bucky asking Steve  _ do you really want me for this team? _ And of Steve answering  _ Bucky, I want you more than anything _ .

And here’s another person asking him personally to fight.

Except when the United States asked him to fight, he got captured and tortured. It wasn’t fun. When Steve asked him to fight, Steve ended up dying.

Bucky thinks he’s done fighting.

“I  _ can’t _ ,” Bucky says, looking Fury in the eye. Fury holds his gaze for a few moments, his expression never changing. Bucky has no idea what’s going through his mind right now.

“Alright,” Fury says finally, standing up and pushing the file towards Bucky. “I’ll leave you with this if you want to change your mind. You can give me a call.”

Bucky watches as Fury leaves, his jacket billowing. He knows Fury’s trying to get him to give in, but Bucky doesn’t open the file again.

He’s done with fighting.

…

Bucky watches the news as Tony Stark and his team of Avengers save the world. His apartment floor shakes, even ten miles away, and he wishes the superheroes well.

He’s happy staying home.

They save the world without him, anyway.

…

After the Battle of New York, as everyone’s calling it, someone comes up to him while he’s working out. It’s fine; he’s using his apartment’s gym, but the woman takes up jogging on the treadmill next to him, which slightly bugs Bucky. There’s two other empty ones she could’ve chosen. 

She starts to run, and Bucky can’t help but glance at her. Something about her seems familiar to him, but he’s also pretty sure he hasn’t met her before. He hasn’t met many people in this century. Her skin is pale and in contrast, her hair is bright orange, stick straight and cut to her shoulders. He feels like he would’ve remembered her hair, or her piercing green eyes, at least. He can smell peaches on her, and Bucky crazily wonders if her sweat is peach-scented. She fixes Bucky with a calculating gaze and arches a brow at him.

“Move in with me,” she says. Her tone makes it seem like Bucky has  _ some _ choice, but not much. He stumbles while running, and it takes him a second to regain his balance.

“Who are you?” he asks, taken aback. Maybe she’s talking on the phone or something.

“Natasha Romanoff,” she replies, and Bucky realizes that he knows her from the news — she’s an Avenger. “And you’re James Barnes,” she adds, taking away any doubt that she’s not talking to him. “I work with SHIELD. Move in with me.”

Bucky has to restrain a groan. Is Fury that desperate to recruit him?

“I’m not here with Fury,” she says next, as if reading his mind (or, more likely, just reading his expression). “I’m here by myself.”

Bucky decides to believe her. He also decides he’s crazy. He also decides that he needs a friend in the twenty first century.

“Where?” he asks, moving hair out of his sweaty forehead.

“D.C.,” she replies, starting to move faster, getting closer to Bucky’s pace.

“Washington?” Bucky asks, furrowing his brows and picking up his own pace, trying to stay ahead of Natasha without exerting himself too much.

“The one and only.” They’re both full on running now, trying to outpace the other. It continues for two minutes before Bucky raises his hand and steps off. Natasha steps off too, sticking her tongue out.

“Sure,” Bucky says, finally replying to her offer as he gulps down some water. It’s not like he has a great love for New York — it stopped being a real home seventy years ago, when Steve fell off of that train — and he’s been to Washington D.C. a total of once in his lifetime, when he went with Steve to see the Washington Monument. It’d be nice to see it again.

…

Bucky meets Clint Barton the first day he moves in. He’s laying on Natasha’s couch, smothered with a golden retriever. Bucky recognizes him from the news.

“Um,” Bucky says, holding a box with the clothes SHIELD bought for him. He thought he was moving in with only Natasha.

“Oh, that’s Clint,” Natasha says, walking in behind him and tucking a strand of hair behind her left ear. “He doesn’t live here, don’t worry.” Clint lays on the couch, unresponsive. Natasha kicks him in the side, and the dog lumbers off as he straightens up.

Bucky sets down his box and crouches down to pet the dog, glancing up at Natasha and Clint.

“Put your damn hearing aids in, Barton,” she mutters, making gestures with her hands at him. Clint reaches over at the side table. His fingers grabs something and he jams it in his ear, fiddling with it before putting another item in his other ear. He fiddles with that one, too, before looking over to where Bucky is getting golden fur all over his jeans. The dog is cute, at least. 

“That’s Lucky,” Clint says, gesturing at the dog. Natasha rolls her eyes at him and gives him a little smile before making another series of gestures. “Oh, and I’m Clint,” he adds.

“Bucky,” Bucky introduces, scratching behind Lucky’s ears. “Was that Sign Language?” Bucky asks Natasha, finally picking up on the things in Clint’s ears being hearing aids, though they look smaller than the only few Bucky’s seen back in his day (God, he feels old).

“Yeah,” Natasha says, glancing over at Clint and her eyes look softer, not as piercing. She jabs a thumb in his direction. “This asshole over here is deaf.”

“Yeah, but” — Clint taps on his hearing aids with an easy smile — “technology, huh?” 

“I guess,” Bucky deadpans. It’s not like he’s encountered any technology like that himself. Clint’s smile drops.

“Sorry,” he says to Bucky before turning to Natasha. “Was that one of the insensitive old people things you told me not to say.”

Natasha opens her mouth to answer, but before she can Bucky protests, “I’m not  _ that _ old!”

“You’re pretty old,” Clint says with a shrug. Bucky smiles up at him, rolling his eyes. At least Clint’s not treating him like he doesn’t know how to handle himself in this century.

“And  _ you _ are insufferable,” Natasha cuts in, pointing a finger at Clint. “Don’t you have your own apartment to go to?” she asks, fixing him with a stare. He stares back, and they seem to have an unspoken argument that she wins.

Clint gets up and calls Lucky over. He waves goodbye to Bucky, shoots finger guns at Natasha, and leaves.

“So, Clint?” Bucky asks, straightening up and looking at Natasha. She shrugs, the ghost of a smile still on her lips.

“He’ll probably come around often. We’re close,” she tells him. “Friends,” she adds as an afterthought.

Bucky could probably pry, but he decides to leave that door closed. 

… 

Moving in with Natasha basically means having a two-bedroom apartment to himself ninety percent of the time. Unlike Bucky, Natasha has a real job, out in the field, doing all sorts of shit that Bucky doesn’t know about and that Bucky doesn’t  _ want _ to know about.

Bucky, on the other hand, spends his time between working out and getting lost on Wikipedia — Wikipedia holes, Natasha had called them.

“You should get friends,” Natasha says one day, walking into their dining room. She was gone the night before, but it’s become routine for her to pop in at random times.

“You should announce your presence, so I don’t accidentally shoot you,” Bucky says, not looking up from trying to teach himself astrophysics by the power of the almighty Wikipedia.

“I’m terrified,” Natasha deadpans, her way of telling Bucky that nothing is going to change. Fair. “Anyway. Friends.”

“I have you,” Bucky points out, looking up and shutting his laptop to see her peek into their fridge and pulls out an apple. “You can microwave leftovers, if you want,” he offers, as she looks for other foods.

“Okay, first of all, if you ever see me microwaving anything, it means I’m in grave trouble. And second of all, you need someone other than me,” she replies, walking over and taking a seat at the table, across from Bucky. 

“Why?” Bucky asks, frowning at her.

“You need more than one friend,” she pushes, taking a bite of her apple. 

“Clint,” he argues. Clint’s practically their third roommate — he always seems to be over, even sometimes when Natasha isn’t home. Him and Bucky have gotten to know each other, even if most of their relationship is built on snark.

Besides, if learning curse words in ASL isn’t friendship, than what is?

“He’s my friend,” Natasha says, sounding strangely territorial. “Try again.”

Bucky frowns again. Can’t they share him? He lets it go, though, when he realizes Natasha’s point — he really doesn’t have any friends.

“There’s a VA a couple of blocks from here,” Natasha tells him. “Maybe go to one of the therapy meetings. Meet some people who’ve been through what you’ve been through.”

“There’s other people who have been frozen for sixty-something years?” Bucky asks dryly, his frown deepening. 

It’s not like he’s  _ against _ therapy, he just doesn’t think it would do very much good. Talking about how much he wishes he didn’t wake up from that plane crash isn’t going to magically send him back to the 1940s.

“James,” Natasha says, in the same tone his mother would use when he was testing her patience.

Bucky’s heart pangs.

“Fine,” he says. It’s not like he’s doing anything else.

…

He goes to a group therapy meeting, and he sits in the very back, wearing sunglasses and a baseball hat. His solitude doesn’t last long, though, before someone sits right next to him. 

Bucky studies the man’s profile, studies his brown skin, and studies the way his nose sits flat before opening his mouth and saying, “There are other seats.”

“According to my big mouth sister, isolating yourself is an early sign of depression,” the man says to him, matter-of-factly. 

“I don’t really need your sister to let me know I’m depressed, thanks,” Bucky says with a snort. He has Nat for that.

“Sam Wilson. Pararescue,” the guy introduces.

“Bucky Barnes. Special Ops,” Bucky says out of habit. The second part is probably unnecessary. 

Bucky hears Sam snort, and he thinks,  _ take that Natasha, here you fucking go. _

Friendship.

…

Bucky keeps on going back, and he actually enjoys the meetings. Natasha looks like a proud mother when he casually mentions that he’s looking forward to the next one.

To be honest, though, it’s more of a seeing Sam thing and less of a getting better thing. 

On the getting better front, Bucky intakes the things the leader is saying and disagrees with them. He doesn’t want to talk about his feelings and his traumas and he doesn’t want to be vulnerable. What he does want is to make dumb jokes, and people watch, and trade music reccomendations, all with Sam. So maybe the VA isn’t improving his mental health itself, it did introduce him to Sam Wilson and that’s a miracle in itself. Bucky feels better than he has since coming out of the ice. Since Steve died.

“You’re good, Barnes,” Natasha says one night, as the two of them sit down for a real dinner together. “I think the VA is helping you.” 

“Can I invite someone over?” Bucky asks, all of a sudden, because he disagrees with Natasha. He honestly doesn’t want to spend his time there but he  _ does _ want to spend it with Sam.

“It’s your apartment as much as mine,” she replies.

And so Bucky invites Sam over for a movie night. They watch Clueless and the movie ends and Bucky says that maybe he doesn’t want to keep going to the VA meetings but he does want to keep on hanging out with Sam. 

“Cool,” Sam says, and he becomes a staple of Bucky’s Thursday nights. Sometimes Natasha joins them, sometimes she doesn’t, but Sam is hellbent on catching Bucky up on what seems like every movie made in the past 70 years, with added commentary and popcorn being thrown.

They also do other things, like work out together (once they ran laps around the Washington Monument and Bucky complained that it was too early — 5 am — to do any running and Sam stopped trying to get Bucky to join him); go to the mall to talk about what they think people’s lives are like (once they saw a pair of girls and Bucky thought they were just friends, but Sam pointed out that they were holding hands and one of them had a lesbian flag on her shirt and Bucky looked at Sam all confused — because people are bold enough to be gay in public now? — and he learnt about Stonewall and gay rights for the first time); and volunteer whenever they can at the pet shelter near Bucky’s apartment (Bucky swears he’s going to get a cat one day, but Sam doesn’t think he’ll ever go through with it). 

But the movie nights. They always come back to the movie nights.

A year later — a year of weekly movies nights, and a solid mixture of deep and dumb conversations — Bucky feels almost normal. Not that his mental health is better — he’s still a little bit stuck on feeling hopeless a lot — but like he can forget that he was born in the 1900s. He’s really fucking thankful for Sam.

“I love you,” Sam tells him one night, as they’re watching Mean Girls. 

“I love you too” Bucky tells him, genuinely touched. “Unless you meant it in a romantic way,” he says, quickly, his mind racing. Because he does love Sam, but he doesn’t — “Then I don’t love you too. But I love you.” Bucky realizes that everything that is coming out of his mouth sounds awful.

“Man,” Sam says with a laugh, his eyes crinkling as he looks over at Bucky, “I just love you like you’re my brother.”

“Good,” Bucky says quickly, before realizing that it might have been  _ too _ quick. He doesn’t know why he’s getting so freaked out over this. “I mean — I’m not — I’m not  _ homophobic _ . I’m gay, actually,” he says, finally, for the first time out loud. It’s not like he didn’t  _ know _ , because he’s definitely liked boys in the past. One in particular. But it feels different saying it out loud. It feels like a weight has been lifted off of his chest. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a thing, right?” he asks, looking over at Sam nervously.

“It’s definitely a thing,” he answers, looking back at Bucky. Bucky’s having a hard time telling what Sam is thinking. He just can’t get a read on him.

“Yeah, like a good thing?” he asks, because he wants to be honest with Sam but he also doesn’t want to lose his friendship with Sam.

Sam thinks for a beat and then says, “If you’re happy.”

Bucky considers that. He’s unhappy in a lot of aspects of his life. Yeah, he still has a lot of shit to work through, trauma wise. He doesn’t know how him being gay fits, yet, but he thinks it’ll work out well for him. Even saying the words felt good.

“Then, yeah,” he tells Sam. “I’m gay.” Saying the words again, Bucky can feel his eyes fill up with tears a little bit. He’s glad he’s letting Sam be the first person see this part of himself. It feels right.

“Yeah?” Sam asks, searching Bucky’s face for how he’s feeling?

“Yeah,” Bucky confirms, looking down at his lap and blinking quickly.

“Cool.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Bucky asks quietly, still not sure if he’s about to lose Sam. He looks back up at him, but Sam’s turned back to the TV, watching Cady fall into a trash can.

“Do  _ you _ ?” Sam asks, reaching for the remote and pausing the movie. He turns to fully face Bucky, sincerity in his eyes. “I’m here if you want to, but we don’t have to if you don’t want to. I love you either way.”

Bucky breathes a sigh of relief, but he doesn’t say anything else. There’s a lot he wants to say, but he doesn’t even know what to start with. Sam eventually picks up the remote and points it to the TV. 

“”I knew it in the 40s, too,” Bucky blurts, all of a sudden. Sam turns back to him, giving him his full attention, and Bucky bites his tongue. “I mean. I know I knew, I guess I just didn’t accept it?” Bucky shakes his head. He doesn’t even know what he wants to say. He thinks for a second before continuing, “I mean. I had sex with a guy once and I liked it more than anything I’ve done with a girl,” Bucky admits with a nervous chuckle. Before he can lose his nerve, he adds, “And I loved my best friend. I think. I  _ know _ ,” he says, for the first time out loud, his heart hammering. 

Because the whole truth of it all is that,  _ yeah _ , Bucky has loved Steve from the moment he saw him, little fists flying. It’s was disgusting thing, when he was young, but it was — still is — thrilling, and it’s so dumb how Steve can still rile up Bucky’s heart, nearly seventy years after his death. 

There’s silence for a moment before Sam asks quietly, “Did you ever tell him?”

“ _ No _ ,” Bucky replies with a nervous chuckle. “No. He wouldn’t have felt the same.” Bucky bites his lip, pausing. “And even if he did, well. He died.”

Bucky can almost see Sam connect the dots. It doesn’t need saying,  _ who _ Bucky was in love with. 

“And that was like a couple of years ago to you, right?” Sam asks slowly, testing the waters.

“Yeah,” Bucky croaks, his throat feeling dry.

Sam searches his face before saying, “I get that. My best friend, Riley… He died too, about a year ago.”

“Yeah?” Bucky says, straightening up a little. He waits for Sam to continue, not wanting to pressure him. His history is plastered in history books and taught in school. He’s never actually heard Sam’s.

“We were part of an experimental unit,” Sam says after another bout of silence. He turns away, averting his eyes from Bucky, clenching his jaw. When he speaks again, his words are heavy. “We had these wings strapped to us. The Falcon project. An RPG hit him out of the sky.” Sam brings his hand to his eyes, wiping them, and Bucky has an urge to hug him. “I should’ve — He died. I got an honorable discharge.”

“Did you love him?” Bucky asks quietly, starting to feel the tears come to his eyes, too.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did.” Sam’s voice is thick, and Bucky closes the distance between them, wrapping his arms around Sam and pulling him closer. Sam leans into Bucky, and Bucky holds him. Bucky cries openly, for his own loss and for Sam’s, and he thinks it’s funny how Sam cries quietly and only allows himself to take the bare minimum from Bucky. Bucky’s prepared to give it all.

After a while like that, Sam pulls away, turning from Bucky to wipe his eyes. Bucky reaches out his hand, but Sam’s still turned away, so he drops it.

“Did — Did people know you liked boys? Like?” Bucky asks quietly after another moment.

“Yeah,” Sam says, turning back to Bucky and blinking. “I came out to my family when I was sixteen. I’m bi.” He shrugs with an exhale. “I got some shit from people at school when they found out, but I figured that the people who mind don’t matter and the people who matter don’t mind.”

Bucky considers that sentiment. “Huh.”

He supposes that it’s true — if someone doesn’t like him for who he is, does he even want to be friends with them? Steve briefly crosses his mind with a pang, but he couldn’t imagine  _ Steve  _ hating him for liking guys. He was Steve. He probably would have punched anyone who would’ve given Bucky shit.

“I stole that from Doctor Seuss,” Sam amends after a moment. Bucky snorts. Of course. After he went and  _ felt _ something about it and everything. “I mean, people aren’t as bad nowadays. A lot of states legalized gay marriage, and  _ yeah _ , you’ll get shit, but you’ll also have tons of people willing to defend you.”

Bucky bites his tongue at that and admits, “I don’t really have friends outside of you, Nat, and Clint.”

Sam shrugs. “Yeah, but you’re famous. I guarantee you that you’ve been people’s sexual awakening. They’d definitely stand up for you.”

There’s a part of Bucky that appreciates that, but it also makes him slightly uncomfortable that he doesn’t actually have people to fall back on. He tries to alleviate the pressure by joking to Sam, “Was I your sexual awakening?”

“Ha,” Sam says, side-eyeing Bucky and rolling his eyes.

They’re quiet for another moment, and Bucky sobers up, asking, “How’d you get over losing someone you loved like that?”

“Good question,” Sam replies, his voice hoarse. And Bucky remembers that, despite Sam seeming so much  _ wiser _ than him, he’s on roughly the same timeline as Bucky, figuring things out wise. Sam gives Bucky a guilty look, realizing that he’s not helping, at the same time Bucky shoots him one for expecting Sam to help him. 

With a big sigh, Sam answers slowly, figuring each word out as he goes, “I figure that this trauma is going to stay around for a while. Maybe until I die, I don’t know. I do know that I can choose how I carry it. I could lug it around in a suitcase and have it weigh me down, but I could carry it in a little man purse instead.” Bucky waits for Dr. Suess to be credited, but no credit comes. Bucky inhales sharply. “And I’m not perfect,” Sam continues. “I’m not even  _ good _ . I have more bad days than good, not even going to lie. I have PTSD and depression. I wake up screaming, feeling like I’m falling. I feel pain from injuries that healed a year ago. But you if you never have bad days, you’ll never know when you have a good one. And it’s getting better. So I’m sticking around.”

Bucky doesn’t realize he’s been holding his breath until he forces himself to exhale. “Sam,” he says, tears pricking at the back of his eyes once again. He half-jokes, “You could be one of those VA therapists.”

“Yeah?” Sam says, taking it seriously. Bucky frowns. “I might, actually,” Sam says, sounding serious. It’s not like he  _ hates _ the VA — he recognizes that people have benefited from it — but he can’t imagine Sam spouting the same rhetoric as the therapists he’s seen. “I know you didn’t get much out of them,” Sam continues when Bucky stays silent, “but they’ve helped me stay around for a whole year after discharge, so.”

Bucky considers that. Of course Sam would be the type of person to want to give back to the people that helped him. He’s fucking Sam. And Bucky doubts he would let the VA make him say the same old cliche things that Bucky had hated.

“Do it,” Bucky says, giving Sam a nod. Sam exhales and they’re quiet for another moment.

“Well, that was a good cry,” Sam says, giving Bucky a chuckle that sounds wet, still. “I thought men in the 40s were emotionally constipated.”

Bucky lets out a sharp laugh. He could think of someone who was. “Well, my ma didn’t get the message,” he tells Sam, wiping the last few tears from his eyes.

Sam gives Bucky a small, soft smile, before glancing at the clock. It’s past midnight, already.

“I think  _ Mean Girls _ will have to wait for another night,” Sam notes. “I should get home.”

“You could stay here,” Bucky blurts, suddenly desperate for Sam to stay. He wants him to stick around for, well, forever. 

Sam stares at Bucky for a second, hesitating before saying, “Of course.”

…

A month later, Bucky’s phone rings at 3 o’clock in the morning. He jolts awake, and blindly reaches for it.

“Hello?” he says into the receiver, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“Bucky Barnes?” a female voice he doesn’t recognize responds.

“This is him,” he asks, letting out a yawn.

“I’m from Georgetown University Hospital,” the woman says. “You’re listed as Natasha Romanoff’s next of kin.”

A pit forms in Bucky’s stomach.

…

When he’s let into Natasha’s hospital room, she’s already sitting up. She looks pale, but healthier than someone who’s just been  _ shot _ should be.

“What did you do?” Bucky asks, shaking his head at her.

“Hey, I didn’t get any arteries hit,” she says, reaching over and holding up a glass of water. “So, cheers.”

“You got hit in the stomach?” Bucky asks, repeating to her what the nurses told him — which, besides for telling him that she got shot and she’ll be fine, isn’t much.

“I was on a mission,” she says as Bucky takes a seat next to her bed. She takes small sips of water, and Bucky glances at her vital signs. “I was escorting an engineer out of Iran. She was being targeted. I was covering her, and we were targeted near Odessa. Someone shot her, right through me. I was transferred her once they stabilized me.”

Bucky lets out a long breath. “That’s…”

“Yeah,” Natasha says, placing her water aside and tucking her hair behind her ear before folding her hands on her stomach. “My engineer wasn’t as lucky. She’s in Odessa. Has a torn artery. She’s in critical condition. She’ll probably make it, but…” Natasha trails off, and Bucky knows that she probably blames herself. He places a hand on her shoulder, and squeezes it, hoping that she can tell how glad he is that she didn’t die. He knows that their relationship isn’t usually very vocal about how they feel about each other — maybe it’s from Natasha being a spy and masking her emotions most of the time, both on and off the field, maybe it’s from Bucky being scared to make those connections in fear that he’ll lose them like he did with everyone else. 

Still, he whispers out loud, “I love you.”

There’s a moment of silence, and Bucky thinks Natasha might have drifted off, but she softly responds, “I love you, too.” 

…

A few weeks later, after Bucky spends too much time lurking in his apartment (according to Sam), Sam pulls him out to go to a bar. 

“I was taking care of Natasha,” Bucky grumbles in protests as they enter the bar.

“Natasha’s been at Clint’s for a week,” Sam points out, dragging Bucky to a table. “Shut the fuck up.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. Looking around the bar, he realizes that there’s almost only male customers. He checks out the other people as Sam orders them french fries and beers.

“I’m assuming you’ve never been to one of  _ these _ before,” Sam says with a smug smile, just as Bucky sees a guy wearing glitter on his face pass and he thinks he knows where Sam’s taken him.

“I’ve been to a gay bar before,” he says, and the smile drops off of Sam’s face. It’s not a lie — there were plenty in Steve and his neighborhood, and he went once, when Steve was too sick to go out. At the time, it was a guilty, pleasure, but he discovered that he liked kissing boys  _ far _ more than girls. “I grew up in a gay neighborhood,” he tells Sam. He probably shouldn’t enjoy the amount of shock on Sam’s face. Take that, history books.

“Okay,” Sam says, looking disappointed that he’s not breaking Bucky in to gay culture. “Well, I’ve been thinking about you coming out, or whatever, and I’ve also been thinking that the two of us need to move on, so I propose that we both find someone to hook up with tonight. Maybe even… find someone,” Sam suggests, raising his eyebrows suggestively at Bucky with a smirk.

Bucky frowns, then looks around the bar, and nods at Sam. He’s got this.

…

An hour and three drinks later, Bucky crashes into a stranger’s apartment. He doesn’t really remember the guy’s name — Roger, or Robert, maybe? Robert, he thinks — because all he can focus on are the guy’s lips on his. His heart hasn’t drummed this hard since — well, Bucky doesn’t remember when.

They stumble to his bedroom, and they make out on his bed. Robert blindly reaches into his bedside table and pulls out a condom and lube. Bucky gives him a breathless chuckle as their lips connect again.

“I’ve always wanted to have sex with Captain America,” Robert whispers. Bucky averts his mouth when Robert comes down again, suddenly feeling wildly uncomfortable.

Right. He’s Captain America to most of the world. Not Bucky Barnes.

“Um,” Bucky says, pushing himself up.

“What’s wrong?” Robert asks, sounding genuinely concerned. And doesn’t that suck, that he doesn’t even know what he’s said.

“I just, I need to go,” Bucky says, clearing his throat. He gets up and heads to leave.

As he heads home, he thinks that maybe people just aren’t going to see him as Bucky. He’s the stars and stripes to everyone else.

For the first time since just coming out of the ice, Bucky feels lost in this new century.

… 

It’s been two years since Bucky woke up in a timeline that wasn’t his, without any of his friends still alive.

Peggy Carter, though. She lived. Of course she did, Bucky figures, because nothing could stop her. Not Nazis, not HYDRA, not Death Himself. If Bucky believed in a God, he’d figure that she stuck around for Bucky himself.

Bucky goes to visit her — the old age home she’s living in is only a twenty minute drive from Bucky’s apartment. Before he goes into her room, a nurse warns him that she’s suffering from dementia — she might not recognize him, or be confused and forget that he walked in. Bucky nods and thinks about how  _ he _ should be like that, but he’s only 30.

“Peggy?” he says, walking in.

“Who —?” Peggy says, her voice sounding brittle. Bucky almost swallows his tongue upon seeing her.

Because he knows that realistically he should be wrinkly, all his hair gray and his hearing going. It’s another thing to  _ see _ it. 

Peggy Carter was the most beautiful and most intimidating woman Bucky ever met. Her age didn’t  _ lose _ it, but it’s warped it. She’s still beautiful, her gray hair spread out around her, but no longer like the young woman she was in the 40s. Her lips are still impeccably red, and Bucky almost laughs, thinking about the poor nurse that Peggy forced to do her makeup. She still holds herself in a manner of importance. Even laying down, Bucky has the urge to stand up taller, just from being around her. She radiates her power.

“It’s me,” Bucky says hoarsely. “It’s Bucky. Barnes.”

“James?” Peggy asks, shifting herself up taller as she looks over at Bucky.

“Bucky, Pegs,” Bucky corrects, looking at her with a sad smile. He makes his way over to her, sitting at a small chair next to her bed.

“You’re here?” she says, turning it into a question. 

“I’m here, Pegs,” he says, feeling tears stinging at his eyes.

“Oh,  _ Bucky _ ,” she says, sounding ripped up. His breath hitches. “Where’s Steve? Is he here?” Peggy looks around, hopeful. Bucky doesn’t know where her mind is right now. He doesn’t know what to say, if she remembers that Steve  _ died _ .

“No, he’s —” Bucky says, almost a whisper. “He’s not here, Pegs. He couldn’t make it.”

“That’s a shame,” she says, bringing up a hand to pat Bucky’s cheek. “I quite liked him, you know.”

Bucky wonders why he thought coming here was a good idea, why he thought he could do this. Because, yeah, Peggy,  _ he knows _ . 

“I know,” Bucky manages to force himself to say.

“I know you did, too,” she says, and Bucky pulls away. He suddenly feels very small, like he’s back in the 1940s and Steve was suddenly towering over him, golden hair and blue eyes shining. 

Was he really that obvious?

“I need to go,” Bucky says suddenly, standing up. 

“Will you come back soon?” Peggy requests, not noticing Bucky’s change in demeanour.

“Yeah,” Bucky croaks, heading towards the door. “Yeah,” he repeats, guiltily, knowing it’s a lie.

…

It’s a Thursday night, a few months later, which means Sam and Bucky are supposed to continue their marathon of the Star Wars movies.

Except when Bucky walks into his apartment, he’s greeted with two words.

“Where’s Natasha?”

And honestly, nice to see you too Nick fucking Fury, nice for the warning before breaking into Bucky’s apartment all bruised and battered when he’s about to have a guest over.

“I don’t know. But I already told you that I don’t want to play your games,” Bucky says, placing his groceries on the kitchen table and making his way over to Fury. As Bucky leans against his wall, crossing his arms, Fury shifts with a groan, bringing out his phone and tapping something on it.

“I don’t have any games for you,” Fury says as he turns the phone towards Bucky.

_ Ears everywhere _ , it reads. Bucky already assumed that — he figures Natasha would have put them there as a precaution. Or, at least, SHIELD would want to keep tabs on Bucky. Still, Bucky tenses up. Fury has to be telling him this for a reason.

“It seems like you do,” Bucky says, deciding to play along with Fury. “It really, really seems like that.”

“I wish I had something to play,” Fury says, while holding up his next note —  _ SHIELD compromised. _

And, well, golly gee, Bucky thinks. 

“I’ll let Natasha know you don’t,” Bucky says, because why the fuck is Fury giving this information to  _ him _ , “but for now I have a guest coming over and —”

Bucky’s sentence is cut off by a gunshot. A bullet cuts right through the wall, hitting Fury squarely in the back and causing him to fall forward. Bucky rushes to him, panic coursing through his body.   
“Don’t… trust… anyone…” Fury groans, grabbing Bucky’s hand and pressing a small flash drive into it. 

“Bucky?” Sam’s voice calls, as Bucky looks at Fury, completely forgetting what to do.

“In here!” he calls, more thankful than ever to hear Sam’s voice.

“Oh, shit,” Sam says, probably from seeing Bucky leaning over a body. “Who —”

“You were a pararescue, right?” Bucky says, cutting him off and straightening up. He glances through his window, and can see a figure lurking there, waiting to see if their target was hit. Bucky’s blood runs cold.

“Yeah, but —” Sam starts. Bucky cuts him off, feeling reckless, like he’s being possessed by Steve fucking Rogers.

“Help him,” he says, turning away from his window and making eye contact with Sam. “I need to go after the shooter.”

Sam gives him a look like  _ maybe that’s not a good idea _ , but Bucky is eyeing the shield. Captain America’s shield. He feels heavy just looking at it, but it’s currently the only protection he has. He grabs it and sprints.

…

Bucky ends up jumping through a window just to catch up with the guy, who’s running faster than a normal human could. The shooter stops at the edge of the roof, and Bucky launches the shield at the guy.

And the guy, with a clang of metal that Bucky realizes is his  _ arm _ —

The guy  _ catches it _ .

Bucky doesn’t remember that ever happening when Steve threw it at enemies.

The shooter looks down at the shield, and Bucky just stands there, dumbfounded like an idiot. He has enough mind to duck when the assassin throws it back, and when he straightens he realizes that the culprit is gone.

…

_ Nicholas J. Fury _ , Bucky notes in his head.  _ Time of death, 1:02 AM. _

…

Bucky had never asked Natasha about her relationship with Fury, but he belatedly realizes that they must’ve been close. Bucky knows that Natasha’s  _ thing _ is not showing emotions, pretending she’s above it, but he can tell that she’s close to tears. He keeps his distance, leaning against the hospital wall as Natasha stands over Fury’s body, resting her hand on his forehead.

An important-looking woman with her hair in a bun walks over to them and approaches Natasha. The woman whispers a few words into Natasha’s ear, and Natasha nods, backing away. There’s a moment of silence before Natasha turns on Bucky.

“Why was Fury in our apartment?” she demands, any trace of sadness wiped from her face.

“He was looking for you,” Bucky answers. She clenches her jaw, searching Bucky’s face for any sign of lying.

“Why?” she asks next, almost angry. Bucky doesn’t know if the anger is directed at him, or at herself for not being there, or just at the world for tearing away someone from her.

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly, sticking his hands in his pockets. His fingers brush against the flash drive Fury gave him, and he brings it out, pressing it into her hands. “Maybe to give you this.”

Natasha looks down at it, and recognition flickers on her face. Bucky thinks he imagines dread, too.

“Captain Barnes,” someone says. Bucky turns to face a SHIELD agent he doesn’t know the name of. “They want you at SHIELD.”

“Me?” Bucky asks. “Why?”

“Secretary Pierce wants to talk to you,” the agent answers. Bucky doesn’t know who that is, but he also figures it can’t be very good.  _ SHIELD comprised _ , Bucky remembers.

“Give me a second,” Bucky says, holding up a hand. He turns back to Natasha, who’s staring at the drive in her hand, her face blank. “You okay?”

“Maybe,” Natasha says, swallowing hard. “Who was the shooter?” she asks, her voice low.

“He was fast,” Bucky replies, recalling him chasing after the guy. “Strong,” he notes, thinking about how the assassin caught the shield. “Had a metal arm,” he finishes, almost hearing the loud metal  _ clang _ .

When Natasha just looks down and doesn’t say anything more, Bucky turns on his heel and lets the agent walk him to SHIELD headquarters. 

…

Secretary Pierce, as it turns out, is Alexander Pierce, member of the World Security Council and close friend to Nick Fury. It feels like Bucky himself is being suspected of Fury’s murder, and Bucky dislikes Pierce quite a bit, even without thinking of Fury telling him that SHIELD — and potentially the World Security Council, who oversees SHIELD — is comprimised. 

“You were the last person to speak to Nick,” Pierce says slowly, as if Bucky’s a child. “Why was that?”

Bucky exhales, and thinks that punching this guy in the face probably wouldn’t do him any good. “He always did have a fascination with me, Sir,” he answers, giving a dry smile. “It was quite annoying.”

“Your apartment was bugged,” Pierce states, like it’s a revelation. 

“I know,” Bucky says, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. “I assumed beforehand, and Fury told me last night. Occupational hazard of living with a spy and SHIELD agent, I suppose.”

“So you know that we know he was looking for Miss Romanoff,” Pierce says leaning forward in his seat. Bucky wants to go home.

“She wasn’t home.”

“And yet, Nick seemed content with you. Miss Romanoff was on a SHIELD mission at the time he visited you,” Pierce says, the first thing out of Pierce’s mouth that gives him pause. Natasha always leaves at random hours — he’s never known where she’s gone, before, but if she was on a mission  _ for SHIELD _ — “He knew that, so I don’t think that was a coincidence. He wanted to see you, no matter what he had said.” Bucky inhales sharply through his nose, trying not to betray his facade. “I’ll ask you again, why were you the last person to speak to Nick?”

“Well, Sir,” Bucky says, not bothering to bite his tongue. “I  _ am _ Captain America.” Bucky gives himself a mental pat on the back for that comeback, and is glad when Pierce doesn’t respond. Bucky stands up and heads towards the door, figuring their conversation is over.

“ _ Captain _ ,” Pierce pipes up. Bucky pauses, turning his head. “Someone murdered my friend. I’m going to find out why.” There’s venom in Pierce’s voice, and he wonders where it came from.

“Understood,” Bucky says, realizing that he doesn’t really want to be on the bad side of Pierce,

His heart pounding, Bucky marches out of Pierce’s office. At first, he heads for the elevator, but he figures that he has too much pent up energy to be stuck in a metal box.

Bucky takes the stairs.

…

When Bucky returns home, Natasha is there, and they search the apartment for bugs and discard them. After, he recounts his visit with Fury, and his meeting with Pierce.

“This is bad,” she tells him, sitting all curled up on their big recliner chair.

“Yeah, you think?” Bucky says, raising an eyebrow and suppressing a scoff. He doesn’t know what to do next.

Natasha saves him from having to say any more by straightening out and saying, “I think I know who killed Fury.” Bucky looks at her, frowning, waiting for her to elaborate. “You remember that mission I had last year? Odessa?”

“Yeah,” Bucky replies, remembering that 3AM call. “I thought you were going to die,” he admits. Natasha nods, visibly swallowing.

“The person who did that?” she says, touching her stomach, probably remembering that night. “Fast. Strong. Metal arm.”

Bucky holds his breath. “Who is he?” he manages to get out.

Natasha glances around the room, letting out a long exhale before saying, “Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He’s credited with over two dozen assassinations over the last fifty years.”

Bucky takes that in, and it takes a second for his brain to register it. The last  _ fifty years _ .

“So what, different copycat killers?” Bucky asks, not wanting to think about what it would mean if it was all one person.

Natasha raises an eyebrow at him before saying, “Except reports dating back to the 1960s all say something about the metal arm. It’s been the same guy, or a very weird requirement for whoever’s behind this.”

The statement gives Bucky pause. He closes his eyes for a second, hoping that it’s a dream. “Nobody can live that long,” he says, but he knows that Steve would’ve been able to live that long with his serum.

“You did,” Natasha says, and Bucky realizes that if Steve’s serum could be recreated well enough to allow him to survive, it could probably be recreated for this assassin to live longer.

“I shouldn’t have,” Bucky mutters, his mouth tasting like led, the sound of the wind in the alps whistling in his ears. Natasha gives him a look, a not-so-subtle warning to  _ not _ say that again.

“Going after him is a dead end,” she says, deciding to ignore Bucky comment. “I know, I’ve tried. I’m not Nick Fury, though, and I’m not SHIELD.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the flash drive Fury gave Bucky on the day he died. “This contains the data that was on the Lemurian Star, a SHIELD ship that some pirates overtook. We had to clean it up and rescue hostages. While I was there, Fury asked me to pick up the data.”

Bucky holds his breath for a count of three before getting up and grabbing Captain America’s shield.

“Let’s see what we can find out.”

…

“You ever been on the run before, Barnes?” Natasha asks with a smirk, pulling Bucky through the mall by his wrist.

“Can’t say I have,” he breathes. He doesn’t remember the last time he’s felt this full of adrenaline. Natasha gives him an almost mischievous smile as she pulls him into an Apple store.

“Now, this’ll let SHIELD know where we are,” she says, walking up to a computer and pulling out the drive. 

“How long?” Bucky asks, his eyes searching the crowd for anyone that might look out of place.

“Nine minutes from… now.” She pushes in the drive, and a bunch of code pops up on screen. Bucky has tried his best to not act like a grandpa who doesn’t understand technology but. What.

“Someone’s definitely trying to hide something,” Natasha notes, typing away at the computer. “There’s an AI that keeps on rewriting itself to counter my commands. I’m going to try and find out where if came from.”

Bucky peers over her shoulder as she types more, and he almost doesn’t hear the Apple employee come up to them.

“Can I help you with anything?” he asks. Bucky checks the guy out. He’s a blond, and Bucky is digging the beard, but he’d prefer if the hair was a little shorter. Still, he can work with it.

“Oh, no, my friend and I were just trying to figure out where to go for a vacation,” he says, shifting himself to cover the computer screen.

“Where are you thinking about going?” the employee asks, smiling widely at Bucky.

“Uh.” Bucky quickly glances at the computer screen and sees a map, focuses on New Jersey. “New Jersey.”

“Jersey?” the guy asks, trying to glance at the computer screen. “Not much of a destination spot.”

Bucky leans over to touch the employee’s shoulder, getting his full focus.

“Oh?” Bucky asks, giving him a half-smile. “Well, let me know if you have somewhere better to go.” He tries to lower his voice, and he literally has no idea what he’s doing. Something must’ve worked, though, because the employee stammers.

“Well. I need to —” He randomly gestures away from Bucky. “I’ve been Aaron, if you want to, um, talk.”

Bucky gives Aaron a warm smile and nods. Once Aaron leaves them, Bucky turns back to Natasha.

“You said nine minutes like nine minutes ago,” he says urgently.

“Hush. I got it,” she says, pointing a finger towards the screen. It’s an address in Wheaton, New Jersey, and Bucky quickly commits it to memory. 

“Let’s go,” he says, yanking the flash drive out. They head out of the store, and  _ honestly _ , could the SHIELD agents  _ at least _ bother to look like civilians.

“Two behind, two across, two in front,” Bucky mutters to Natasha, putting his arm around her.

“Laugh at something I said,” Natasha says quickly, as the two agents in front of them approach. Bucky laughs, trying to conjure up a real one. The SHIELD agents pass them without a second thought and they continue, heading onto an escalator. Both of their eyes scan the people around them for more agents, and Natasha suddenly grabs Bucky’s sleeve. Behind her, Bucky can spot the SHIELD agent that brought him to Pierce’s office.

“Kiss me,” she demands.

“What?” Bucky hisses, taken aback. He hasn’t  _ told _ her about that whole gay thing he’s trying out, but he figured it wouldn’t be a problem. Or, more like he hoped it wouldn't be a problem but a part of him is scared that it will be, so he's avoided bringing it up.

_ Besides _ , he figured that she liked Clint — she basically softens when he’s around.

Without giving him time to protest, Natasha pulls Bucky’s neck down and kisses him, hard. He doesn’t even have time to kiss back before they reach the bottom of the escalator and Bucky realizes that they’ve passed the agent unnoticed.

Bucky thinks he should tell Natasha.

…

“I have a question for you,” Natasha says as they drive down the highway to fucking Jersey. Bucky makes a humming noise, spurring Natasha to continue. “Was that your first kiss since the 1900s?”

Bucky snorts. “No, it was not,” he says. Though he would’ve preferred if it was, he figures.

“Who have  _ you _ been kissing?” Natasha asks, twisting her body to look at Bucky.

“Lucky,” he deadpans. Natasha hums.

“Well, I just want to say, as a friend, that your kiss was awful, and I feel bad for… Lucky,” Natasha says, stretching her arms out in front of her. 

Bucky bites his tongue for another five miles before saying, "I'm not a bad kisser." Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Natasha raise an eyebrow at him. "I'm not! I'm just —" Bucky grips the steering wheel almost painfully. "I'm gay," he says, almost breathing the words. 

Natasha's silent for a moment before saying, "Well, you were flirting with Aaron."

"Something like that," Bucky says with a shaky laugh. 

They're quiet for another stretch of road before Natasha breaks the silence with, "Bucky?"

"Yeah?" he says, quickly glancing over to her. 

"You know that I'd accept you no matter what, right?" she asks, sounding quite serious. 

It seems ridiculous now, that Bucky ever considered differently. 

…

SHIELD's secret office at the old training spot is fairly easy to spot. Their secret elevator is, too. When Bucky and Natasha step off, the elevator doors slide shut behind them and the lights flick on. He doesn't see any button to get out, and he's never been claustrophobic before, but he still doesn't like feeling trapped. 

In the middle of the room, there’s a computer set up, with a single chair and several different monitors.

“This can’t be the data-point, this technology is ancient,” Natasha mutters. Bucky decides to hold his tongue at that.

As they approach the computer, Bucky spots a newer looking flash drive ports. Pulling out the drive, he sticks it in with a shrug. Immediately, the computer whirs on.

“Initiate system?” a robotic voice says. One of the screens displays the words, and Natasha strides over to the keyboard, typing in “yes”. 

The computer whirs, and a vaguely familiar face appears on the screen. An accented voice calls out, “Barnes, James Buchanan.” Bucky straightens, looking at the main monitor. “Born 1917. Romanov, Natalia Alianovna. Born 1984.” A camera moves above them, scanning Bucky and Natasha up and down.

“Some kind of recording?” Natasha asks, taking a tentative step forward.

“I am not a recording, Fräulein,” the computer says, and the voice is so familiar that it makes Bucky shudder. He doesn’t want to think about that possibility. “I may not be the man I was in 1945, when the Sergeant and his friends took me prisoner, but I am.”

The computer flashes an old picture of Doctor Arnim Zola. Bucky’s mouth fills with the taste of blood.

“Do you know this —” Natasha asks. Her question trails off as, Bucky assumes, she sees his expression. 

“I am Doctor Armin Zola. I worked for HYDRA, and late SHIELD. In 1972,” Zola continues, and Bucky clutches the straps of the shield tighter and he feels like his feet are being recut open, “I received a terminal illness. Science could not save my body. My mind, however, was worth saving. You are standing in my brain.”

Bucky is both registering what Zola is saying and also shutting down. It feels like his entire body is shutting down, failing him. 

Blinking hard, he shakes his head and pushes his thoughts away. Instead, he asks, “How did you get in SHIELD’s office?”

“Invited,” Zola replies calmly. Natasha makes a little sound, like she understands, but Bucky won’t like the answer.

“Operation Paperclip,” she whispers, and a shudder runs through his body as he remembers reading about the US government  _ inviting _ Nazi scientists to help. It didn’t seem like it was a good idea when Bucky read it, and it definitely doesn’t seem like a good idea now. 

“The new HYDRA grew inside of SHIELD,” Zola continues, his camera still whirring above them.

“A parasite,” Bucky manages to spit, feeling very off kilter. So Steve’s death was worth nothing. Zola got captured for him to just infect SHIELD.

He understands Nick’s message of  _ SHIELD compromised. _

“What’s on this drive?” Natasha asks the computer, flicking her eyes over to the flash drive.

“I wrote an algorithm for Project Insight,” Zola explains, and Bucky doesn’t know what Project Insight is, but it doesn’t sound good if Zola’s writing an algorithm for it.

“What kind of algorithm?” Natasha asks, and Bucky thinks he hears something whistling, but he’s probably just going crazy.

“Fascinating question,” Zola replies, and Natasha’s phone beeps. “Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it.”

“We’ve got a bogey,” Natasha calls. “30 seconds, top.”

“From who?” Bucky asks, pretty sure he already knows the answer.

“SHIELD,” Natasha replies, and Bucky’s stomach drops.

Quickly grabbing the flash drive from the port, Bucky slides it into his pocket and then grabs Natasha around the waist.

“There,” she says, pointing to a grate in the ground. With a groan, Bucky rips it off, and they jump in. Bucky holds up the shield above them as fire rains down.

… 

Afterwards, carrying Natasha out from the rubble and blinking dust out of his eyes, Bucky really only knows one person to go to. 

“Sorry,” he whispers, aware he looks like utter trash. It’s been a day.

“No, my day has been boring so far,” Sam says, letting them in.

…

Bucky spends too long in the shower. As it turns out, you can’t actually drown yourself in one. Eventually he shuts it off and throws on the clothes Sam generously laid out for him.

He can’t stop thinking about what a  _ waste _ his time in the war was. The entire point of the Howling Commandos were to wipe out HYDRA and they… they failed.

He peaks into the room he usually sleeps in when he stays over at Sam’s. Natasha is in there, drying her hair. She doesn’t look much better than him. He raps on the door softly with his knuckles before stepping in and sitting on the bed with her. 

“You okay?” he asks her, reaching out a hand. Natasha just looks at it and takes a long breath before replying.

“Yeah, it’s just —” she starts. Bucky waits. “For a long time, I killed. I killed  _ good people _ . And when I joined SHIELD, I felt like I was doing something  _ right _ . I felt like I was finally part of something. And now I’m finding out I just traded in the KGB for HYDRA. I thought I knew who I was killing for. I guess I’m not so sure anymore.”

Bucky doesn’t know much about Natasha’s past. He does know that she’s Russian, and that Clint recruited her for SHIELD after she was trained as an assassin. Past that, he doesn’t really know much.

He doesn’t know what to say. He says nothing.

“I owe you,” Natasha says, after a few moments, looking up at Bucky.

“Hey,” Bucky says, scooting closer to her on the bed. He pulls her into a hug, shaking his head. “This relationship goes two ways. I know you would’ve done the same for me.”

Natasha leans into it for a three-count, but then pulls away, shaking Bucky off with a small smile. 

“Yeah,” she says, her smile dropping, “but I’m pulling you out of retirement, basically.”

“Well,” Bucky says with a sigh, leaning back. “I’ve gotta one up Clint as your best friend somehow.” Natasha rolls her eyes. Her eyes connect with something in the background, and as Sam approaches, Bucky turns.

“I made you guys breakfast,” he says, leaning against the doorway. Bucky knows that Sam deserves a better explanation to why they’re invading his house, and he’ll give him one, but for now he just really wants food.

“Waffles?” Bucky asks, giving Sam a grin.

Sam rolls his eyes and starts to walk away, calling back to Bucky, “Of course I have your waffles, dummy.” 

Bucky turns back to Natasha with a grin. “Waffles!”

…

After breakfast, Natasha straightens her hair while Bucky explains the situation to Sam.

“Do we have a team?” Bucky asks, turning to Natasha as she places the iron on the table.

“Barton’s closest,” she says with a sigh, cupping her face with her hands. “Brooklyn. Still on this coast, at least. Contacting him would be too risky though. Too many singles. And it’s a four hour drive, anyway. Stark’s in Malibu, I have no idea where Bruce is, Thor is light years away. Nick is —” she breaks off, her voice cracking.

“Right,” Bucky says, licking his lips. He pushes his empty plate away, his waffles churning in his stomach.

“ _ SHIELD _ launched a missile at you guys?” Sam asks, drumming his fingers on the table. “I doubt many people have clearance to do that.”

“Pierce,” Natasha and Bucky say in unison.

“Okay,” Sam says, frowning at them. “But you can’t just kidnap a member of the World Security Council in broad daylight.”

“He’s not working alone,” Bucky says, closing his eyes and seeing  _ SHIELD compromised  _ flash back at him. “Zola’s Algorithm was on the Lemurian Star, I don’t think that was an accident.”

Natasha purses her lips, fiddling with the cord of the straightening iron. “You know what else wasn’t an accident? Out of all the people on that ship, there were mostly techies, but one SHIELD agent. Jasper Sitwell.”

“You guys are going to just kidnap a SHIELD agent in broad daylight?” Sam asks, looking very concerned as Bucky and Natasha make eye contact, shrug, and nod. “No,” he says, getting up to grab something on the counter.

“What is your  _ problem _ with us kidnapping in broad daylight?” Bucky says, leaning forward as Sam returns and pushes a folder towards him.

“Don’t be a dumbass, Barnes,” Sam says. The cover of the file reads,  _ EXO-7, FALCON,  _ and Bucky considers telling Sam to do the same.

“Sam,” he says, giving Sam the deepesting glare he can manage. 

“Bucky,” Sam says, sticking his chin up and holding Bucky’s gaze.

Bucky’s only gotten Sam to talk about the Falcon project a total of twice, and both times made it pretty clear to Bucky that the whole thing is a painful memory for Sam. “I can’t ask you to —”

“Good thing you’re not asking, I’m  _ offering _ ,” Sam counters, a determined look in his eyes.

“What?” Natasha asks, her head turning from Bucky to Sam. Bucky slides the file to her. They’re all silent as she opens it and reads it. After a few minutes, she closes it and pushes it away.

“Well,” she says, looking up at Sam, “let’s get you a suit.”

…

“That was cool,” Bucky says, bouncing on the balls of his feet and looking down to where Natasha just drop kicked a guy.

“Barnes, you’re a nerd,” she replies. Fair.

Bucky and Natasha wait on the roof of the only office building that accepted their request of using the roof to interrogate someone. Jasper Sitwell’s screams ring in Bucky’s ears. Bucky sure hopes Sam doesn’t let him fall.

“If we make it out of this, you’re buying me a drink,” Bucky says, his head snapping up as Sam flies straight up, with Jasper Sitwell in his arms.. Bucky has to admit, the Falcon wings they managed to steal from Fort Meade look badass on Sam.

“Bucky, I’ll buy you  _ two _ drinks if we live,” Natasha says, heading over to where Sam lands with Sitwell.

Before any of them can say anything, Sitwell holds up a hand. “Zola’s algorithm is a program for picking Insight’s targets,” he says, gasping for air.

“What’s Insight?” Bucky asks, turning to Natasha.

“SHIELD developed three helicarriers that can neutralize threats before they happen,” she answers, looking very unsettled.

Bucky fear filling his stomach. Maybe it’s the waffles.

Sam cuts in, saying, “And the targets are —?” 

“Anyone who’s a threat to HYDRA,” Sitwell answers, because of course HYDRA’s targets couldn’t be something like all of the sexual predators on the earth. That would make Bucky’s life easy. “Now, or in the future.”

“The future?” Sam asks, glancing up at Natasha and Bucky briefly before looking back at Sitwell. “How could it know?” 

“Zola’s algorithm reads people’s pasts to predict their futures.”

“And then Insight —” Natasha mutters, staring down at her hands.

“Insight kills them,” Bucky whispers, giving a low exhale.

“A few million at a time,” Sitwell confirms, causing Bucky’s stomach to form a pit. 

…

“Insight launches in 16 hours,” Natasha says as they pull onto the highway. So far, it’s been a quiet ride except for Sitwell’s insistences that Pierce is going to kill him and them. They’ve all ignored it. They know.

“I know. It’s fine,” Bucky mutters, thinking about how he only has one gun on him, and it’s not even a good one. A fucking pistol. At least he has a couple of knives with him too. “I can do it in four.”

From the passenger seat, Bucky looks in the rearview of Sam’s car to see Natasha raise an eyebrow at him.

“We,” she corrects. Bucky rolls his eyes in admission.

“Don’t say stuff like that,” Sam says darkly. “Something is going to happen and we’re only going to have four hours to fix this shit.”

As soon as the sentence is out of Sam’s mouth, something makes a thump on the roof of his car. A metal hand crashes into the backseat, grabbing Sitwell by the neck and launching him onto the other side of the highway.

Natasha jumps into Bucky’s lap, shoving both him and Sam out of the way of bullets raining through the roof of the car. Sam immediately steps on the break, somehow having time to glare over at Bucky. 

Someone is flung off of Sam’s roof, his metal arm digging so deep in the ground Bucky thinks he can see indents. He doesn’t feel like that fares well for their chances of beating him.

This is the Winter Soldier. This is a ghost story.

A little belatedly, they realize that  _ they should be fighting back _ . Natasha raises her gun and Bucky numbly feels around for his shield with one hand while his other reaches for the gun strapped to his waist. As Natasha takes aim and the Winter Soldier straightens, another car rear ends Sam’s. It propels them forward, and Natasha loses her gun on the floor, and then the Winter Soldier is somehow back on their roof. Sam slams on the gas, but the Winter Soldier punches through their windshield and grabs the steering wheel.

Bucky needs to blink.

Instead of taking that moment, he pushes his right arm through his shield’s straps as the car behind them pushes them around. He wraps his right arm around Natasha and grabs Sam with his left, and pushes all of his weight against the passenger door, breaking it open and getting them (sorta) safely out. Sam and Natasha roll in different directions than Bucky, but Bucky’s used to bad luck.

He glances at Sam’s totaled car and feels slightly guilty, but he totally gave Sam a chance to stay home, so.

And then Bucky is closer to the Winter Soldier than he’s been before and he realizes that the Winter Soldier is a blond — he must’ve covered his hair the night Fury died, but this is in the daylight, anyway. It makes him a little sick as he thinks of Steve, always in the back of his mind, and also makes him want to laugh because  _ the Winter Soldier shouldn’t be blond.  _ It just doesn’t make sense, in Bucky’s head. 

He doesn’t have much time to linger, because the Winter Soldier is blond, but the Winter Soldier also has an arsenal of weapons, and Bucky has a single pistol and two knives and a shield and the Winter Soldier is pointing a grenade launcher at him.

He has no idea where Sam and Natasha are, but Bucky holds up the shield. The grenade hits the shield, saving him from being blown up, but unfortunately, Bucky forgot how much force is needed to keep standing while holding the shield. The shield is blasted out of his hand, and he’s shot away, off of the bridge part of the highway (haha, he’s in the air again, Bucky realizes, except it’s not so funny when he realizes that maybe he’s not over that train being forty feet in the air and he’s actually  _ falling  _ now). He crashes through a window of a bus and he thinks  _ owowowow _ and his head hurts and he realizes that he just involved civilians. As much as he wants to lay on the floor and let pain consume him and maybe let Natasha and Sam do the gritty work, Bucky makes himself stand up. He hobbles to the front of the bus, mentally and belatedly thanks the bus driver for his hasty stop, and blinks to clear his vision.

“Send the bill to Tony Stark,” Bucky mutters as the shocked bus driver opens the doors and he dizzly walks through them.

He shakes his head, and it pounds, but he can  _ see  _ straight, and he realizes that traffic is stopping, realizing that something is very wrong. For the first and last time — mark it in the history book, pals — Bucky half-thanks Zola for whatever serum he has pumping through his veins, because it means when Bucky sees his shield laying forty feet away, he actually feels fine enough to sprint towards it. Scooping it up, he keeps on sprinting. The fight isn’t happening where he is.

He’s starting to think of some way to get to the Winter Soldier, when he hears Natasha’s voice, and sees her on the ground level with him. She shoots up, and before Bucky can make any move towards her, the Winter Soldier jumps down from the bridge and starts to pursue her. 

Tightening his shield, he’s about to follow when he hears more people dropping down from the bridge. Bucky had never believed in time slowing down, but it does as he turns around to see people with machine guns aiming at him. As they start to fire, he blocks the bullets with his shield, and he’s amazing that he’s not hit. Trying to keep his footing from the shield, Bucky thinks about how maybe he should’ve taken Fury’s offer because he would’ve had more training with the damn thing. 

One-by-one, though, the shooters stop, dropping dead. Bucky looks up to see Sam shooting them back.

“ _ Go! _ ” Sam shouts, as Bucky raises a hand in thanks. Readjusting the shield to sit more comfortably on his left arm, Bucky takes off running, looking for Natasha and the Winter Soldier.

He finds them right in time for the Soldier to point a rifle at Natasha. Honestly, his plan is to just push the Soldier over with the shield — which he admits isn’t a great plan, but he doesn’t want Natasha to get shot — but the Soldier ruins that plan by hearing Bucky coming and punching the shield with his metal arm with a  _ clang _ .

Hey, at least the soldier is focused on him, right?

The Soldier then kicks Bucky in the chest, sending him flying, and Bucky has the mind to flatten himself at the Soldier fires. Trying to catch his breath, Bucky gets up, and is really glad that the fucking shield is pretty indistructible, because the Soldier keeps on firing at him.. He doesn’t know what to do. He runs.

The Soldier pursues him, and Bucky switches into running backwards so he can attempt to shoot his gun while running. His aim is completely awful due to his movements, and he curses everyone in World War II who called him the best shot in the United States Army. 

His gun runs out of bullets, and he throws it at the Soldier. It makes a satisfying clang, and Bucky thinks that of course,  _ the gun _ would hit. The Soldier staggers for a moment, so Bucky continues to run. When the Soldier gets back into it, Bucky launches the shield at the Soldier, giving up on any protection entirely, and he’s pleasantly surprised to see the shield hit the Soldier right in the mouth. The Soldier brings his hand up to his mouth, and rips off his mask, at the same time Bucky reaches him and sees his eyes clearly for the first time.

And —

And and and and and and and and and and and and and

Bucky’s brain short circuits, but it seems like the Soldier’s does to, because they both stare down each other, moving like flies in molasses.

His hair is longer (obviously, Bucky thinks, it’s been 70 years, he should be fucking Rapunzel by now), but the eyes are still the same, and Bucky doesn’t know how he didn’t see it before. He freezes.

Bucky’s seeing the eyes of someone he saw fall forty feet off of a train. Maybe he’s just going insane. The craziness of his life has  _ finally _ caught up to him and he’s seeing things. Maybe he actually aged while in the ice and his mind is giving up on him. That seems likely. 

Steve Rogers is standing in front of him.

Bucky’s the one who moves first, and he doesn’t understand how Steve is in front of him and he doesn’t understand why Steve doesn’t recognize him, but he does understand that he doesn’t have much over Steve, and he needs the surprise on his side. He goes for his shield, and Steve reacts too late — Bucky is able to bring it down over Steve’s head,  _ hard _ .

Steve crumples and Bucky hopes he didn’t — No. He feels sick at the thought.

Sam flies towards him, looks at the Winter Soldier — at Steve — crumpled on the ground. He only has time to say “Wha —” before a van pulls up besides them and throws open the door.

“Get in,” a woman says, and Bucky doesn’t know if she’s on their side or not, but he still feels like he’s drowning and he doesn’t really care, so Sam and him drag Steve into the van and they find Natasha, mostly unscathed, and pick her up, too, and Bucky doesn’t know what to do. 

…

The woman is the same professional-looking one from the hospital, the one who whispered into Natasha’s ear. She introduces herself as Maria Hill, a SHIELD agent, and Natasha trusts her, so Bucky trusts her. Sam directs her to his house, insisting that they regroup there.

Maria drives them there while Bucky sits in the back and stares at Steve.

Because.

Steve.

He’s — 

“They never found a body,” Bucky says, his voice hollow. Natasha places a hand on his knee. They’re quiet for the rest of the ride. 

Once they get to Sam’s house, they tie Steve down. Bucky doesn’t protest, because HYDRA made Steve into a  _ weapon _ , but he also doesn’t point out that Steve could probably break his bonds if he chooses.

“There’s a deadly assassin in my house,” Sam mutters, gathering first aid supplies.

“Bucky, I’m pretty sure you gave him a concussion,” Maria says, checking Steve out as Sam, Bucky, and Nat clean up their various cuts and bruises.

“He was trying to kill us. I had to. Also —” Bucky cuts himself off, dropping the ice pack he was pressing against his shoulder. He couldn’t do the alternative. He can’t even voice it.

“Steve Rogers…” Natasha says, glancing towards Bucky as he leans over to pick up his ice pack, gauging his reaction. “Wow.”

“How…?” Maria wonders aloud, trailing off as Steve stirs.

“Steve,” he says, rushing forward and kneeling down to meet Steve’s eyes. They’re still the same shade of blue, but they stare at Bucky blankly, unrecognizing. “Steve, do you know me?”

“You’re — You’re my mission,” Steve says, and Bucky realizes that his voice lost its Brooklyn accent. “But I —”

Steve doesn’t say anything more, instead frowning and looking down at his lap. His chest is moving up and down and Bucky wants to scream or cry or both.

Instead, he walks away from the others, clenching his ice pack harder than necessary. He feels sick, but not in a way that makes your stomach churn and causes bile to crawl up your throat. It feels like his heart isn’t beating, or it’s beating really slowly. His chest hurts every time he inhales, and no matter how many breaths he takes, his lungs still feel empty.

He feels like he’s drowning.

“Bucky,” he hears, and he turns, coming face-to-face with Sam. He doesn’t know what to say.  _ God _ , he feels pathetic. He hears a pathetic choking noise, and with a jolt, Bucky realizes it came out of his throat.

“I don’t — “ Bucky says, forcing his throat to work, each word feeling like it’s scratching its way out. “I don’t know — I thought — “

It’s like he’s having too many thoughts at once and he has no idea how to articulate them all. He’s not even sure that he wants to.

“Russian soldiers must have found him,” Sam says, looking at Bucky with a therapist look (Bucky wants to punch his past self for suggesting that Sam become one in the first place).

“He was reported as killed in action,” Bucky whispers, realizing it at that moment. He was reported as  _ killed _ in action, not missing. And his word crumbles. Again.

Because how deep does this corruption go? If the Russians found him, why the  _ hell _ did they  _ keep _ him? Why did the American government accept not having the body of their biggest hero? Why did they just accept the Russian’s words?

And then Bucky thinks a horrible thought — did they even care about Steve? Or was it all just the flashy costume to them? Was Steve dead as soon as Bucky picked up that shield?

The thought of it makes Bucky laugh, a horrible, barking thing. It also makes him feel sick, the stomach kind, not the chest kind. He lurches, and he hasn’t thrown up since he was sixteen and he went to his first bar and he drank too much, too fast, but Steve was there to take care of his stupid teenage self and even now Steve is  _ here _ and he tried to  _ kill _ him and the government knew, they must’ve known, and they did nothing. They did  _ nothing _ .

He vomits all over the hallway floor. Sam says it’s okay and he cleans his house with carpet cleaner and paper towels while Bucky sits on the floor and sobs, genuinely sobs for the first time since Steve fell from that fucking train.

“We need to evacuate,” Maria says, maybe a minute later, maybe an hour later, Bucky doesn’t know. “There’s going to be agents here soon enough. They’ll want him back.”

“Where? There’s nowhere for us to go,” Sam says, his tone low.

“There is,” Maria says with finality, and that’s that.

…

There’s a base set up in what looks to be an abandoned building, and Bucky could almost laugh when he sees Nick Fury there, sitting up in a hospital bed, injured but alive. The motherfucker.

“About damn time,” Nick says to them, and Bucky rolls his eyes.

Sam and Maria lead Steve — who’s been amazingly compliant with them so far — through the bunker and he takes a seat while Natasha goes to talk to Fury. Bucky sits down next to him and isn’t that how it’s always been — Steve Rogers and his right hand man, Bucky Barnes.

He mutters nonsensical things to Steve, things low enough for none of the others to hear, but things he knows, from the war, Steve’s super soldier serum will allow him to pick up. He doesn’t even know what words are coming out of his own mouth; all he knows is that Steve isn’t responding.

A few moments later, Natasha and Fury walk in, and they have some discussion Bucky doesn’t really pay attention to. Fury pulls out a case and reveals targeting chips — one’s to override Insight’s Helicarriers.

“We have to assume everyone aboard those carriers is HYDRA. We need to get pass them, insert the server blades,” Nick says as Bucky looks down at his fingernails and wonders how anyone could extinguish Steve’s fire, “and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage what's left.”

At that, Bucky looks up. “We’re not salvaging anything,” he says, maybe sounding rude, but he’s on the verge of tears and he doesn’t want them to spill over. “HYDRA’s been growing inside of SHIELD for God knows how long and —”

“Barnes —” Fury says, a hint of warning in his voice.

“No!” Bucky says, raising out of his chair and glaring at Fury. “He was marked as Killed in Action on every SHIELD file. This corruption runs too deep for salvaging. Everything goes.”

Blinking back tears, Bucky looks down, aware of everyone’s eyes on him. He thinks about how Steve would tease Bucky for being the easy crier out of the two of them and he thinks, hey isn’t that funny, that Steve always got all quiet when he was upset and Bucky cried and now they’re back where they were, Steve staring blankly without a word and Bucky with tears coming down his face.

“He’s right though, Nick,” Maria mutters, putting a hand on Fury’s arm as Bucky sits back down. “It shouldn’t stay.”

“Then what do you suggest we do?” Fury asks, turning to her.

“We’ll need to leak all SHIELD files,” Natasha suggests. “Prove that HYDRA’s growing. Give the public a reason for this. I’ll infiltrate the council.”

“And we need Sam and Bucky to replace the chips,” Maria finishes.

“I’m all for this but…” Without having to look up, Bucky knows that Sam is glancing over at him. “Is he really in a state to fight?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha whispers. Bucky doesn’t bother to respond. He doesn’t know if he is, either.

“We need someone to watch the Sol — to watch Steve anyway,” Maria points out.

“Is he in a state to do  _ that _ ?” Fury asks, in that angry way he has of speaking. They all go silent.

“I don’t think he wants to let him get away,” Sam murmurs finally. 

In the end, Sam insists that he can replace all three chips by himself. Bucky agrees to stay with Steve.

Hey, he figures. Maybe alone he can convince Steve to remember him.

…

Sam flies in and replaces the targeting chips while Natasha infiltrates the World Security Council and leaks SHIELD and HYDRA’s secrets to the world.

Bucky stays at the bunker and begs a shell of a man to remember him.

…

It’s not until Natasha comes back to Bucky and Steve in the same cramped little conference room — Steve sitting motionless and Bucky furiously wiping at his eyes — that Bucky realizes he hasn’t slept in an entire day.

“Sleep,” Natasha insists, pulling Bucky’s hand away from his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, but his glance at Steve must communicate enough because she adds, “He’ll still be here when you wake up. I promise.”

Bucky’s not sure if Steve’s real. That the thing. He’s half-convinced that Steve will disappear and he’ll have to deal with losing him all over again. 

“Sleep,” she repeats, and Bucky slumps, giving into her and closing his eyes.

…

He dreams of Steve falling and of Steve lost in the snow, pained and bleeding and of Steve being found and of Steve being tortured like he was in Azzano. Bucky wakes up screaming, hurting from a torture that wasn’t his.

It takes a second for him to adjust, but he realizes that he’s still in the same room in Fury’s bunker, the light off. His eyes shift to make him see better, and he can see Steve in the dark, looking over at him. Rationally, he should be scared having an assassin in the dark next to him, but it’s  _ Steve _ .

Right?

“Do you remember me?” Bucky asks into the darkness. 

Three beats pass before Steve replies, “No.”

“Are you sure?” Bucky asks, almost desperate. He’d cry, if he wasn’t already dried out.

There’s no response. Bucky’s heart beats up.

“I know you,” Steve says, his voice cutting through the darkness after another moment of silence. “I don’t remember you, but I  _ know _ you.”

“It’s okay if you don’t remember me,” Bucky says, and he _ is _ desperate. He wants Steve back so, so bad. He remembers, if Steve doesn’t. He remembers everything. “Steve,” Bucky says, slowly standing up. “Your name is Steve.”

“Steve,” Steve repeats.

Bucky thinks that he would start crying again if he wasn’t fresh out of tears. 

“Steve,” Bucky breathes out into the air. “Steve, can I touch you?”

“I —” Steve whispers, cutting himself off.

“I just want to make sure you’re real,” Bucky elaborates, trying to keep his voice steady. It cracks anyway. “It’s been… It’s been so long. It’s been seventy years. I don’t —”

“Yeah,” Steve answers, and Bucky can hear him take a deep breath. “You can — yeah.”

Bucky walks over to Steve in a few steps, and he reaches a hand out. If this was seventy years ago, he would’ve clapped Steve on the neck and pulled him into a hug. He doesn’t know what to do now.

Steve hesitantly reaches out his right hand, and he touches Bucky’s hand with the tips of his fingers. They stay like that, not making further contact, but not pulling away, either.

“It’s okay if you don’t remember,” Bucky repeats. “I remember. I’m Bucky. You’re my best friend. Steve Rogers.”

“Bucky,” Steve says and it feels like his heart is being glued back together.

… 

Bucky doesn’t know when he fell back asleep, but when he wakes up he’s sitting on a chair and the room is empty. He doesn’t remember moving to a chair, he doesn’t even remember moving away from Steve.

He remembers Steve, and touching Steve, and seeing Steve, and hearing Steve, and  _ Steve _ .

He gets up, because he doesn’t know where Steve is now. When he walks out of the room, he’s met with Natasha sitting on the floor in front of the entrance.

“Hey,” she says, looking up at him.

“Hey,” he says, forcing himself to be polite instead of saying “Where’s Steve?”.

Their relationship wasn’t built on much talking, before. It was more of an agreement, almost, that they were friends and roommates, but Bucky suddenly wants to find out everything he can about Natasha. He knows the way she forms words, and the little body movements she makes when she’s nervous, tucking a strand of hair behind her left ear repeatedly, always the left, always, always. He knows that she likes Clint Barton but would never say it. He knows that she uses peach shampoo (or lavender if she can’t find it) and can’t stand microwaved foods.

But he doesn’t know her favorite color, or what she was like as a kid, or the title of her favorite book.

He doesn’t know the things that, if she was in Steve’s position, he would want to remind her of. He’s suddenly desperate to know, but he also wants to find out where Steve is, so he makes a note to make more of an effort and he asks, “Where’s Steve?”

“What do you mean, where’s Steve?” Natasha asks, frowning from the floor.

Bucky has an irrational panic, that everything he’s experienced was just in his imagination. Maybe it was a dream. Maybe he’s actually, truly insane.

He forces himself to breathe before calmly responding, “Steve Rogers. Captain America?”

“You mean he —” Natasha gets up and peers into the room Bucky just exited. “He’s not in there?”

“No,” Bucky says, trying to keep his voice level. “I thought he walked out?”

“I’ve been sitting here for the past few hours,” Natasha tells him, her frown lines deepening. “Sam and Maria took watch before me. He didn’t just walk out.”

And Bucky, looking back into the room, realizes too late that the window is open.

A pit forms in his stomach.

…

“He’ll come back,” Sam says, pushing a plate of food at Bucky. Bucky doesn’t stop wringing his hands.

“And if he just went back to HYDRA?” Bucky asks, not making a move to eat. He doesn’t think he could stomach it, not when Steve is possibly being tortured. Or worse.

“I don’t think that’ll happen. I think maybe he remembers. Or he wants to remember. Or he —” Bucky buries his head in hands and Sam gets the hint that he’s  _ not helping things _ and shuts up. “Maybe he just needs time to learn about himself first, before he comes to you,” Sam says, softer now.

Bucky sighs and hopes that’s true.

…

The senate puts Natasha on trial for leaking SHIELD’s files. Bucky thinks it’s impressive how she tells the government to kiss her ass, but he also wants to scold her for being so reckless.

“You could’ve been sent to jail, you know,” he notes, glancing at her as Natasha walks into their apartment.

“You watched the news?” she says, pushing back her hair behind her left ear before shrugging out of her jacket.

“ _ I _ would’ve sent you to jail,” he notes, trying to fall back into their old routine of joking banter. He doesn’t put enough into it, he registers, as Natasha sits down besides him with a concerned look.

“He’ll come back,” she says. She sounds certain, like she knew Steve personally. Bucky lets out a sigh.

“How can you be sure?” Bucky asks, biting his tongue. He hates feeling like he’s drowning all of the time. He hates worrying over Steve again. It’s a habit that he’s fallen out of.

Natasha hesitates, scratching at her palm, before leaning her head against Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky sees her close her eyes, and he thinks he’s not going to get an answer, but she says, eyes still closed, “I knew him. As a kid.”

Bucky thinks that it’s not possible — that Bucky would’ve known her, too — but he hears her take a large breath, so he waits.

“I was born in Russia,” she begins. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you that before. When I was young — seven or eight, I can’t remember — I was put into a program called the Red Room. They took young girls and trained them to fight. To kill. Steve trained us. The Winter Soldier, though was just called him  _ Soldat _ . He trained us, he was just as harsh as the KGB, but — Girls only left the Red Room in one way. Eventually, there were only two of us left. We worked with Steve one-on-one. He was… He wasn’t  _ nice _ , but he was like an older brother. He told me a story, once. It was about a superhero, which I had never heard of before then. The superhero was inhumanly strong, and he went on a mission to rescue his friend all by himself. Steve — I don’t know if he remembers everything, but I think he’ll come back. I think, eventually, he’ll come.”

When she finishes, Bucky lets out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. He hopes Natasha knows how much it means to him, her telling him about her past. He knows it’s a hard subject. And Bucky can’t help but feel some sort of triumph. He knew they couldn’t take all of Steve away.

Natasha closes her eyes, and her breathing evens out. Bucky closes his, too.

… 

It’s radio silence for another two weeks before Bucky is walking to Sam’s — his first time out of the house since he came back from Fury’s lair — and he’s aware that someone is following him. He keeps on walking, but at a slower pace, and in a few seconds, Steve is walking alongside him. 

“Do you remember me?” Bucky asks, glancing over at Steve but not breaking his stride.

“Do —” Steve says, fear written all over his face. He furrows his brows with a frown and instead of answering the question he asks, “Do you want to get bagels?”

Bucky supposes that Sam won’t mind if he doesn’t show up.

…

Bucky doesn’t know how much of the twenty-first century Steve has seen and digested. He doesn’t know how much of the 1900s he remembers to compare it to. He silently thanks Sam suggesting they rank every bagel shop in DC (“Because it’s your  _ Jewish heritage _ , Bucky,” he had argued, and Bucky didn’t know how to protest.), and brings Steve to his favorite — the one right near their apartment. Convenience played a big part on his ranking. As they enter the shop, Steve’s scanning everything. Bucky doesn’t know if he’s checking for threats — he did that, whenever he would go to the Brooklyn library, years ago — or if he’s taking in the modern style of the shop. There are a couple of TV screens hanging, displaying the menu, but the way the shop is style, with sleek tables and chairs, is also new.

“Order whatever you want,” Bucky says to Steve while putting on a smile for the cashier.

“Whatever you want” turns out to be half of the menu, but Bucky remembers from the war how Steve inhaled so much food that the team got more rations than a standard unit got — Captain America couldn’t  _ starve _ .

He feels like a proud mother when Steve picks up his first bagel and starts to eat it. His metal arm hangs limply at his side, but Bucky can’t deal with anything. At least Steve’s  _ there _ .

“So,” Bucky says slowly, kicking his legs back and forth like a little kid. He has so much pent up nervous energy and he wishes he picked the shop in second place on their list — a whole hour walk away. Then again, he probably would’ve have the same amount of energy, but also be sweaty.

Steve looks up at Bucky with his big blue eyes, pushing another piece of bagel into his mouth. He probably doesn’t even realize the puppy dog eyes he’s giving Bucky, because he’s always insisted that he  _ never _ made those eyes. 

Bucky’s heart aches.

“What do you remember?” he asks, making an effort to stop his feet and sit up taller.

At Bucky’s change in demeanour, Steve shrinks away, slouching in his seat. Berating himself, Bucky leans back and tries to give Steve a smile and seem calm.

“It’s okay if you don’t remember things!” he says quickly. “I just wanted to know. You don’t even have to answer. Look, we can just sit here in silence and you can eat and then you can leave or I can leave and we never have to see each other again even though the thought of that crushes me because I’ve missed you so so bad for so so long and I just don’t want to lose you, not again, but I also want to give you space and let you heal and I don’t even know what you’ve been through but I want to help you get better and I —”

“I remember that you ramble when you get nervous,” Steve says, cutting Bucky off. The air gets trapped in Bucky’s throat. “And you cry when you’re scared, or frustrated, or happy, or sad, or anything.” His lungs stop working as Steve leans over the table and wipes wetness away from Bucky’s eyes with his right hand. “You cry a lot,” Steve says softly, his hand lingering on Bucky’s cheek.

“Yeah,” Bucky says shakily, forcing his voice to work. 

“I don’t remember all of it. Bits and pieces come to me when I see something that triggers a memory, but…” Steve withdraws his hand and shrugs, looking dejected. “I’m sorry,” he says, looking up at Bucky with those goddamn  _ eyes _ .

“It’s okay. I’m fine with bits and pieces,” Bucky says, his cheek feeling cold where Steve’s hand was. “Come home with me,” he blurts, and Steve looks at him, nervous and shocked. “Come home with me, Stevie,” he repeats, quieter.

Steve nods.

…

Natasha stays at Clint’s apartment the first five weeks Steve stays over. Their apartment only has two rooms and two beds, but Steve insists that he’s fine sharing a bed with Bucky. Bucky’s heart jumps into his throat when Steve brings it up, but they lay back to back and if he closes his eyes he can imagine he’s nine; he’s 17; he’s 24 and laying with Steve right besides him.

He spends his days telling Steve stories about their childhood, and things about his mother. Steve’s face lights up when he remembers something and Bucky feels  _ good _ and he thinks: this is what healing feels like. It feels like he has the old Steve back.

Except he knows it’s not the old Steve because the old Steve didn’t wake up gasping most nights, trying to subdue his panic so Bucky doesn’t wake up. He always does anyway, and he doesn’t know how to help Steve through it.

When Natasha comes home, she sees Steve sitting on the couch with Bucky. Bucky breaks off mid-sentence talking about Monty’s pet cat. Natasha looks at Steve, then makes eye contact with Bucky and gives him a quick nod before retreating to her bedroom. 

“I know her,” Steve says, sounding guilty. He looks down at his lap and starts worrying the hem of his shirt (one of Bucky’s that doesn’t really fit him, but at least it’s not fucking  _ bondage _ gear like what HYDRA dressed him in).

“She forgives you,” Bucky says, before Steve can say anymore. “I promise.”

Steve’s silent.

…

That night, Steve wakes Bucky up again. It’s not unusual; Bucky lays still, feigning sleep. He’s sure Steve would hate it if he knew how often he woke Bucky up, considering the care Steve takes to be silent. After a moment, though, Bucky realizes that Steve’s  _ crying _ .

Steve doesn’t  _ cry _ — he gets angry. He gets panicked, gasping in pain. He doesn’t cry.Bucky cries, Steve stews.

Except.

Bucky sits up in bed, slowly, and turns to see Steve hunched over in the dark. Steve stills at Bucky’s movements, and Bucky whispers into the dark, “Steve?”

“I’ve hurt Natasha,” he says, his voice flat. He turns to Bucky, and in the dim light, he can see tear tracks on Steve’s cheeks. “I’ve hurt  _ you _ , I’ve hurt so many people.”

Bucky makes a clicking noise in the back of his throat. “I know, but that wasn’t you, that was —” 

“Bucky, that  _ was _ me,” Steve says with a tone of finality. After a moment of silence, he asks, sounding unsure, “Do you really want me?”

“Steve,” Bucky replies, his brain echoing with an exchange that Steve probably doesn’t even remember. “I want you more than anything.”

“I’ve killed so many people,” Steve whispers, with the slightest hint of a whimper.

“So have I,” Bucky says, without a second of hesitation.

“That’s different. That was for the good of America.”

Bucky makes a little sound of protest, because he’s not Steve. He got to the war because he was drafted, and he stayed because Steve asked him to.

“I still killed,” he insists.

“Bucky,” Steve begs. “I’m not your Steve anymore. I don’t think I  _ can _ be. Even if I remember every single thing —”

Bucky shuts Steve up by surging forward and pressing a kiss on his lips. Steve makes a surprised “umph” sound, but doesn’t pull away first. Bucky does.

“I don’t care,” he says, leaning in and pressing another kiss onto him. “I don’t care, I don’t care,” he repeats, kissing him again, almost desperate. He wants it to say everything he doesn’t know how to. He  _ needs  _ Steve to understand. “You’re still you, you’re still  _ Steve _ , please,” he begs, leaning in and kissing Steve again.

“Bucky,” Steve says, giving Bucky’s chest a light push with his right arm. “I _ can’t _ .” Steve sinks down into the bed and rolls away from Bucky. “I can’t.” 

…

The next morning, over breakfast, Steve seems cagey. Well, more cagey than usual. Him being tense makes Bucky tense, and they’re both sitting there, locked in tenseness, when Natasha comes in.

“Okay,” she says, looking over at them. “I’m going to stay at Clint’s.”

Breathing in through his nose, Bucky glances at Steve before asking, “Can I talk to you?”

Natasha shrugs, and so he gets up, leading her by her wrist to his bedroom. 

“What?” she asks when he closes the door. 

He fixes her with a frown and asks, “Are you staying at Clint’s because of Steve?” 

There’s a moment of hesitation before she replies, “Partially, yes.”

“He already thinks you hate him, Nat,” Bucky says, trying to give her the best puppy dog eyes he can. 

“I don’t hate  _ him _ ,” Natasha says, almost scoffing. “I hate the constant reminder of my past.” And the reminder  _ is  _ Steve, Bucky thinks.

He doesn’t want to lose Steve, but he also doesn’t want to lose Natasha. “Look, he can —”

“Bucky, it’s fine,” Natasha says, reaching out and lightly pushing his chest. “I’ll get over myself, I promise. You guys work out whatever, and I’ll be fine.” Silence falls before a small smile appears on her face and she quietly adds, “Besides, I  _ want _ to stay at Clint’s.”

“You want —” It takes Bucky a second before his brain catches up, but when it does, he gives her a little surprised laugh. “Did you tell him?”

“Tell him what?” Natasha asks, wiping any emotion from her face. Bucky rolls his eyes.

“That you — !” he says, gesticulating and bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“That I  _ what _ ?” she asks, giving Bucky a pointed stare.

He makes a surprised little sound as Natasha gives him a tiny little smile.

“Shut up,” she tells him, her smile growing. “I’ll be fine. Besides, I think I know some way I can help.”

“Well, take care of yourself,” he says, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into a tight hug.

“I’m staying in Brooklyn,” she says, the words slightly muffled against his chest. “I’m not moving to Canada.”

“It’s a scary world in Brooklyn, trust me,” he replies, letting her go.

“Nah, you’re not there,” she says. They stare at each other before Natasha initiates another hug. She pulls away and gives Bucky’s cheek a kiss. “See you in a minute.”

Bucky watches her go, and counts to five before exiting his room. When he returns to Steve, Steve’s still sitting there, stiff and silent.

“Are you okay?” Bucky asks, slowly taking his seat at the table.

“Yeah,” Steve says, looking up at Bucky and blinking several times. “I — I just remembered something, last night.”

“Oh,” Bucky says, breathless. Maybe Steve  _ isn’t _ bothered by Bucky kissing him. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” Steve says shortly.

Leaning back in his chair, Bucky exhales for a long moment before replying, “Okay.”

…

Natasha comes back a week later, and Steve and Bucky are sitting on opposite ends of the couch, still locked in their non-argument, neither of them willing to talk about it.

“I have good news,” she says, sitting in between the two of them. “I want you guys to meet Tony Stark.”

Bucky may be upset at how Steve’s refusing to talk to Bucky about how much he doesn’t want whatever Bucky wants, but he’s still aware of the way Steve tenses up at the name Stark.

“Do you remember Howard, Steve?” he asks, glancing over to him. “Tony’s Howard’s son.” Bucky only met Howard twice, once right when they returned to base from Azzano and once when the Commandos got new weapons from him. He knows that Howard was part of Project Rebirth, though — Steve must’ve met him several times. Bucky’s never met Tony, though, despite hearing about him from Natasha and Clint. 

“Yeah,” Steve says shortly. Must not have liked Howard, Bucky supposes.

“Why do you want us to meet Stark?” Bucky asks Natasha. It’s not like he doesn’t like the guy — he’s never met him — but he’s apprehensive about taking Steve to meet one of the most famous people on the earth.

“Because I think —” Natasha lets out a loud exhale. “I think he may be able to help Steve.  _ Oni vyterli vashi vospominaniya, pravil'nyye _ ?” she asks Steve, because haha, thanks, Bucky never learnt Russian.

“ _ Da _ ,” Steve replies, and Bucky sort of hates how easily the language rolls off of his tongue.

“ _ Ya dumayu, chto on mozhet pomogat' vernut' ikh _ .” 

Bucky twiddles his thumbs. 

“ _ Kak _ ?”

“Good question,” Natasha says, and Bucky tunes back in. “I’ve talked to him briefly about it, and he said he’d talk to Bruce Banner about it, but he’s cocky enough to do anything. You just need to agree.” When Steve’s quiet, she adds, “At the very least, he can give you a tune up on your arm.”

“Okay,” Steve breathes.

…

“Barnes, if you don’t stop pacing, I’m going to kick you in the shins.”

“Sorry. Sorry, I just —”

Bucky slumps down in a chair, feeling exhausted. He’s not allowed into Tony and Bruce’s makeshift lab-slash-hospital room, and Steve’s in there  _ alone _ . 

“I know,” Natasha says, moving her chair closer to him. She puts a hand on his knee and he glances up at her, grateful for the contact. He’s grateful for everything she’s been doing for him — he knows he’s being a pain in the ass, recently, taking more than he’s giving, but he hopes that Natasha knows how much he loves her.

“I love you,” he tells her, just in case.

“I know,” she tells him, the ghost of a smile painting her lips. “I love you too,” she tells him. They hold eye contact for a moment before she adds jokingly, “I have better things to be doing. But I love you. That’s why I’m here.”

Bucky nods, and his heart beats for her.

“Clint never really adopted Lucky” she says, after a beat of silence.

“Yeah?” Bucky replies, thankful for the distraction of thinking about Steve. He’s a fan of Lucky, anyway.

“Yeah. He more… rescued it,” she elaborates, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Rescued it?” Bucky asks, leaning his chin in his hand and listening to Natasha speak.

“Some jerks were abusing it and so he beat them up and took the dog to a vet and then home.” Bucky doesn’t know why she’s telling him this, but then she blurts, ”Clint keeps feeding him pizza.”

Bucky’s never had a dog, but he’s pretty sure they shouldn’t just eat human food. “That’s…”

“Yeah, he doesn’t really know how to take care of a dog,” she says to Bucky, giving him a sad smile. “I think maybe he needs help.”

“Yeah? From — oh,” he says, as it clicks what she’s saying.

“Not yet, but I think I’m going to move in with him soon.” Natasha glances at the makeshift hospital room door, and then looks back to Bucky. She rolls her eyes when she sees his grin.

“To take care of the dog,” Bucky teases, smirking at her.

Natasha smacks Bucky’s leg, but still smiles at him with a roll of her eyes.

“Don’t make me say it.”

“We’ll be able to go on double dates,” Bucky says, grinning at her.

“Oh, you have a boyfriend?” she deadpans, raising an eyebrow at her.

Bucky frowns. He goes back to pacing.

…

Steve comes out of Tony’s room looking fine, and Bucky breathes a sigh of relief. Steve gives him a little wave, and Bucky wants to hug him, and then kiss him, and then — 

He doesn’t though, instead letting Tony finish up speaking to him.

“...you should be all good, but call me if you start feeling murdery. Or, rather, call Bruce. I don’t have a PhD in that shit,” he says, patting Steve on the shoulder.

Steve approaches Bucky and Natasha, and gives them a little wave. He smiles, and Bucky’s heart pangs.

“How do you feel?” Natasha asks, and Bucky’s glad. He can’t seem to make his mouth open.

“Good,” Steve says, looking Bucky up and down with a concerned look. “Yeah, I’m —” Steve shuts his mouth, opting for a smile instead.

“Good luck,” Tony says, giving them finger guns.

…

Steve says he’s good, but he keeps his distance from Bucky when they return to the apartment. Natasha prepares to move out, packing up her things, and Steve helps put clothes into boxes as Bucky and her fight over the coffee machine. 

A small of Bucky hopes that Natasha is creating the distance between them, but when Natasha officially leaves, Steve’s just as distant.

Bucky slowly deflates.

… 

“I need to tell you something,” Steve tells him one night, wringing his hands. Bucky looks up from the book he’s been attempting to read, already desperate to talk to Steve.

“Yeah?” Bucky says, throwing the book aside. Steve’s eyes follow the book with a frown, before sitting down next to Bucky, but turning so that they’re facing.

“It’s about something I remembered,” he starts. “Before Tony, actually. I just. Well, it’s clearer, now.” Bucky nods and Steve licks his lips. “It’s a shitty apology, but I just —” Steve takes a big breath, closing his eyes for a second. “You deserve to know — Just please don’t hate me?” Steve asks, hopeful, and Bucky can swear he hears Steve’s old self in that. He quickly nods. 

“I,” Steve says, and Bucky waits. “I,” he repeats. Bucky leans forward, raising his eyebrows. Steve lets out a sigh, and covers his face with his hand. “I like you,” Steve blurts, and Bucky thinks he’s mishearing things. “Like as more than a brother,” he elaborates, and Bucky’s not mishearing, he doesn’t think, but he’s probably dreaming.

“Oh,” is the first thing Bucky manages to say. His heart is beating so hard that Steve could probably hear it. “That’s nice,” he adds on, as if he didn’t already make it super awkward. Steve lets out a low chuckle. 

“Bucky,” he says, softly, leaning his head closer to him, “can I kiss you?”

“Please,” Bucky whispers, breathless even before Steve presses his lips against Bucky’s. 

As Bucky closes his eyes and leans into it, Steve brings his right hand up to cup Bucky’s cheek and Bucky blindly reaches for Steve’s other hand, pressing it against his other cheek. He gives a little jolt at the coldness, but kisses Steve harder, not wanting him to pull away. A little laugh escapes his lips and Steve kisses the sound away.

Bucky tries to move impossibly closer to Steve — their bodies are pressed together — but he manages to maneuver and swings his legs over Steve’s, half sitting in his lap.

Suddenly, Bucky’s apartment door swings open and Sam’s standing there, saying, “It’s been nearly two months since I’ve seen you and you and Nat are both avoiding me, and I’m not going to let you drown in your own depress — Oh.”

Sam realizes that Steve and Bucky are kissing at the same time that they register that someone else is in the apartment. They pull away from each other and Steve glances at Sam guiltily while Bucky just smirks at him.

“I’ll have you know that I’ve actually left my apartment in the last two months,” he tells Sam before pressing his forehead to Steve. He giggles and Steve lets out a tiny little laugh, his breath washing over Bucky’s mouth. Bucky’s heart flutters when he realizes that it’s the first time Steve’s laughed since he got away from HYDRA.

“Great, I get to be a third wheel,” Sam mutters, closing the apartment door and walking in properly.

Bucky laughs again, and Steve smiles at him, and he feels better.

They’re not perfect. Bucky wouldn’t even go as far as to say that they’re  _ good  _ yet.

But they’re better. They’ll keep on getting better.

**Author's Note:**

> translations for mobile:  
"Un capitaine parti, un autre pour le remplacer." = "One captain gone, another to replace him."  
"Comme s'il pouvait être remplacé." = "As if he can be replaced."  
"Soldat" = "Soldier"  
"Oni vyterli vashi vospominaniya, pravil'nyye?" = "They wiped your memories, right?"  
"Da." = "Yes."  
"Ya dumayu, chto on mozhet pomogat' vernut' ikh." = "I think he can help get them back."  
"Kak?" = "How?"


End file.
